So there’s been a big change in the last couple of weeks. Specifically I became too busy to be able to do my Blood Angels army up in time for ultimates.
As a result I made a snap decision and sent in my Eldar list for the tournament.
Its essentially my 2000 point ‘best of’ list, reduced by 200 points. The method of reduction was a toss-up between two options. Both drop a dire avenger tank (180 points with the avengers) leaving the list with 4 troops, one option drops two power weapons from the autarchs to get the extra 20 points, the other option drops two shuriken cannons from chin mounts, or drops two dire avenger tanks down from missile launcher to double shur cannon.
In the end I went with dropping the power weapons. Though they were a ‘nice-to-have’ in a couple of the games at my last tournament, on reflection they were not a necessity.
They are close to completely useless in Victory point and kill point missions since the two autarchs invariably die in any game where they get out of the tank and get into an assault. I’m sure it is possible to have them do something useful with their power weapons and NOT die, but I’ve not seen the opportunity for it in any game I’ve played thus far. Eldrad can live in assaults. Autarchs simply cant.
So the final army is:
2 x Autarch with fusion gun
3 x 5 Fire Dragons in a Wave Serpent with twin-linked shuriken cannons and a chin mount shuriken cannon
1 x 5 Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent with twin-linked shuriken cannons and a chin mount shuriken cannon
3 x 5 Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent with twin-linked Eldar Missile Launcher
3 x 3 War Walkers with Shuriken Cannons. Lots of them.
I’m going to spend what little hobby time i have left before the event sprucing up the existing army as best I can, rather than rushing a paint job onto my Blood Angels which wouldn’t have worked out well.
I still have no idea what the missions are for the tournament, I didn’t receive the Players CD before I left for this swing up north, so I’ll only see the missions on the Thursday before the tournament...if I’m lucky.
Not ideal, but also part of why I went with Eldar. As previously discussed, I’m a lot more confident of my ability to adapt with Eldar than I am with my Blood Angels list.
Saturday, 15 October 2011
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Farseers and why I dont use them anymore
Here’s the thing. I used farseers, in particular Eldrad, for years. Probably over a decade. Almost all of that was non-competitive play.
As I began to play more and more capable opponents and more competitive lists, I found that farseers in general became less and less effective.
The first thing that limits their effectiveness is when you move from “one or two” squads of dragons to the full triple threat. Most players do this eventually, generally as they get ‘serious’ about playing Eldar. There really is no compromise, triple dragon is, in my opinion, head and shoulders above any other alternative for any force except footdar....well I guess I’ll get to my thoughts on footdar at another time.
Why does the swap to triple dragon decrease apparent value of farseer? Because you can’t fotune all three. Previous to the switch, you can play with Eldrad (or double seer) and be able to cover all of your primary threats with two casts of fortune, wierd as that sounds.
I ran a double falcon list with Eldrad in one and a seer in the other. It was a reasonably good list at 1500 points in that the two falcons were nigh on impossible to kill, but once you ran it up against genuinely good lists with a decent general it suddenly didn’t seem anywhere near as good (funny how that works)
So eventually I migrated to triple dragons in serpents. From that point on I struggled to find ‘good’ (read worth the effort) targets to fortune. Yes, sometimes one dragon tank is more important early than the others...but more often than not your opponent is equally happy to down the one or two that aren’t fortuned (and your heavy support) while ignoring the fortuned one. If you instead fortune the heavy support (be it falcon/prism or walker) then they down your fire dragons.
However doom is still handy right? Well, yes it is....but do you need it? When is it most helpful?
-Hand to hand combat
-Shooting with a chance to wound of 4+ or worse
Well, my army has.....zero hand to hand potential. It also has.......very little below S6, and the bits that are below S6 shouldn’t be firing since it means they are out of their tank. So it’s primary use was making certain (read article on certainty and chance later) that things would die, which is very helpful, but not essential. In fact if you can get enough firepower available to hit a target (see post entitled Firing order) you often don’t end up using all of it and the odds seem to even themselves out for you.
It’s true that occasionally I really need to kill a target (generally a squad of tac marines it seems, normally about 8 of them) and I miss having doom around for the surety it provides. But on the flipside, my army performs the same way every game or near enough for my satisfaction.
The psychic defence is the biggest loss, as I’m sure most Eldar players would instantly guess. That said, when playing a full mech Eldar list, what does the loss of psychic defence REALLY expose you to?
Well, it exposes you to a whole bunch of shenanigans from Space Wolves, that’s for sure. That said, how often do you really WANT to be driving your tanks around next to his rune priest? Often enough for it to annoy you when he has the storm up, but not as often as perhaps you’d think if you are trying to avoid the storm.
It makes it a lot harder to keep Grey Knight vehicles stunned/suppressed. That’s a genuine pain. Their other powers aren’t generally as troublesome given that if they are using hammerhand in an effective manner against you it indicates something more critical has already gone wrong.
Vanilla marines don’t have many powers that bother you, the gate can be annoying, but to be honest, a disembarked squad with a librarian attached.....well that’s just asking for a torrent of S6 isnt it?
Blood angels have several powers that are troubling and not having psychic defence against mephiston is a real pain, particularly since he is an absolute bastard to put down using S6 AP5 weaponry. But outside of him, the shield of sang is their primary power you’d be countering and....you don’t care. Seriously. A 5+ cover save that they aren’t going to use against any guns you’ve got? Who cares?
Tyranids are an issue, you lose the ability to counter/deny FNP. Which, combined with the type of shooting your army has, hurts Eldar more than it hurts a lot of other armies. I work by the “kill whatever doesn’t have FNP” maxim. Generally they protect hive guard, so you kill tervigons with your S6 (or little things) and try to drop fire dragons on the hive guard if they are a massive problem (which depends on where they are). If they FNP their tervigon, then you torrent the hive guard and fire dragon the tervi’s. Of course its not that simple....but it never is.
Dark Eldar, Imperial Guard, Orks, Necrons, Tau.....None of them have psychic powers of consequence to a Mech Eldar force.
Chaos marines have powers.....that you don’t care about. Nurgle demon princes with wings and warptime are scary.....but they die to torrent at least as well as anything else in the game.
So, what are we really taking this defence for? Grey Knights, tyranids and that’s all?
So I stopped using farseers. Which lead to the discovery that they weren’t actually doing anywhere near as much for me as I thought they were.
So what can you replace them with?
Well, you have a couple of options, but I’d already realised that what I wanted was the ability to reliably start off-table and deliver a decent hit in turn two.
So double autarchs is where I ended up.
So from the whole migration I’ve come to the following opinions:
1. Fortune is simply not that useful for a force with multiple redundancy, you can’t fortune all of them and since they are all identical the opponent doesn’t mind targeting a different one.
2. Doom is not necessary as anything but a reliability tool (which is in itself quite valuable) to ensure that you are not subject to those freak incidents where you hit six times with your cannons and only wound 3 times on a 2+. You can’t cover for the loss of that reliability BUT the double autarch does ensure that you get more sources of firepower on the board at the same time, allowing for more things shooting that target.
3. Psychic defence, while seemingly handy, is actually only really handy in a comparatively small number of matchups. It is VERY handy in some of them (GK obviously and it really hurts psyker battle squads) but generally it’s not needed, it’s a nice to have.
4. Double autarch allows you, when getting the option to go second, to completely remove one full shooting phase from your opponent without having a corresponding phase where you are at half strength.
As I began to play more and more capable opponents and more competitive lists, I found that farseers in general became less and less effective.
The first thing that limits their effectiveness is when you move from “one or two” squads of dragons to the full triple threat. Most players do this eventually, generally as they get ‘serious’ about playing Eldar. There really is no compromise, triple dragon is, in my opinion, head and shoulders above any other alternative for any force except footdar....well I guess I’ll get to my thoughts on footdar at another time.
Why does the swap to triple dragon decrease apparent value of farseer? Because you can’t fotune all three. Previous to the switch, you can play with Eldrad (or double seer) and be able to cover all of your primary threats with two casts of fortune, wierd as that sounds.
I ran a double falcon list with Eldrad in one and a seer in the other. It was a reasonably good list at 1500 points in that the two falcons were nigh on impossible to kill, but once you ran it up against genuinely good lists with a decent general it suddenly didn’t seem anywhere near as good (funny how that works)
So eventually I migrated to triple dragons in serpents. From that point on I struggled to find ‘good’ (read worth the effort) targets to fortune. Yes, sometimes one dragon tank is more important early than the others...but more often than not your opponent is equally happy to down the one or two that aren’t fortuned (and your heavy support) while ignoring the fortuned one. If you instead fortune the heavy support (be it falcon/prism or walker) then they down your fire dragons.
However doom is still handy right? Well, yes it is....but do you need it? When is it most helpful?
-Hand to hand combat
-Shooting with a chance to wound of 4+ or worse
Well, my army has.....zero hand to hand potential. It also has.......very little below S6, and the bits that are below S6 shouldn’t be firing since it means they are out of their tank. So it’s primary use was making certain (read article on certainty and chance later) that things would die, which is very helpful, but not essential. In fact if you can get enough firepower available to hit a target (see post entitled Firing order) you often don’t end up using all of it and the odds seem to even themselves out for you.
It’s true that occasionally I really need to kill a target (generally a squad of tac marines it seems, normally about 8 of them) and I miss having doom around for the surety it provides. But on the flipside, my army performs the same way every game or near enough for my satisfaction.
The psychic defence is the biggest loss, as I’m sure most Eldar players would instantly guess. That said, when playing a full mech Eldar list, what does the loss of psychic defence REALLY expose you to?
Well, it exposes you to a whole bunch of shenanigans from Space Wolves, that’s for sure. That said, how often do you really WANT to be driving your tanks around next to his rune priest? Often enough for it to annoy you when he has the storm up, but not as often as perhaps you’d think if you are trying to avoid the storm.
It makes it a lot harder to keep Grey Knight vehicles stunned/suppressed. That’s a genuine pain. Their other powers aren’t generally as troublesome given that if they are using hammerhand in an effective manner against you it indicates something more critical has already gone wrong.
Vanilla marines don’t have many powers that bother you, the gate can be annoying, but to be honest, a disembarked squad with a librarian attached.....well that’s just asking for a torrent of S6 isnt it?
Blood angels have several powers that are troubling and not having psychic defence against mephiston is a real pain, particularly since he is an absolute bastard to put down using S6 AP5 weaponry. But outside of him, the shield of sang is their primary power you’d be countering and....you don’t care. Seriously. A 5+ cover save that they aren’t going to use against any guns you’ve got? Who cares?
Tyranids are an issue, you lose the ability to counter/deny FNP. Which, combined with the type of shooting your army has, hurts Eldar more than it hurts a lot of other armies. I work by the “kill whatever doesn’t have FNP” maxim. Generally they protect hive guard, so you kill tervigons with your S6 (or little things) and try to drop fire dragons on the hive guard if they are a massive problem (which depends on where they are). If they FNP their tervigon, then you torrent the hive guard and fire dragon the tervi’s. Of course its not that simple....but it never is.
Dark Eldar, Imperial Guard, Orks, Necrons, Tau.....None of them have psychic powers of consequence to a Mech Eldar force.
Chaos marines have powers.....that you don’t care about. Nurgle demon princes with wings and warptime are scary.....but they die to torrent at least as well as anything else in the game.
So, what are we really taking this defence for? Grey Knights, tyranids and that’s all?
So I stopped using farseers. Which lead to the discovery that they weren’t actually doing anywhere near as much for me as I thought they were.
So what can you replace them with?
Well, you have a couple of options, but I’d already realised that what I wanted was the ability to reliably start off-table and deliver a decent hit in turn two.
So double autarchs is where I ended up.
So from the whole migration I’ve come to the following opinions:
1. Fortune is simply not that useful for a force with multiple redundancy, you can’t fortune all of them and since they are all identical the opponent doesn’t mind targeting a different one.
2. Doom is not necessary as anything but a reliability tool (which is in itself quite valuable) to ensure that you are not subject to those freak incidents where you hit six times with your cannons and only wound 3 times on a 2+. You can’t cover for the loss of that reliability BUT the double autarch does ensure that you get more sources of firepower on the board at the same time, allowing for more things shooting that target.
3. Psychic defence, while seemingly handy, is actually only really handy in a comparatively small number of matchups. It is VERY handy in some of them (GK obviously and it really hurts psyker battle squads) but generally it’s not needed, it’s a nice to have.
4. Double autarch allows you, when getting the option to go second, to completely remove one full shooting phase from your opponent without having a corresponding phase where you are at half strength.
Monday, 3 October 2011
Evolution of an Ultimates list......Doubts
Can I take an army I’ve only started playing a few months ago, with only a dozen (at best) games, to the ‘ultimate’ tournament for Western Australia, and perform well?
I’m not sure. Which is the problem. I’m pretty sure I could take my Eldar and perform well, but I doubt that it is a ‘winnable’ tournament for Eldar under my usual evaluation criteria. The mission information is still not available and may not be until the day of the tournament.
Blood Angels I’m confident are capable of winning under almost any mission criteria using the army list I’m looking at.
Unfortunately I’m not as confident that blood angels with myself as general are as good as the theoretical general.
That said, after a period of soul-searching (an admittedly quite short period) I’ve decided to just run with the angels and see how it goes.
The current list is down to 5 squads of assault marines with meltas and a power weapon, mephiston, three priests and a librarian.
I’m not convinced that I actually need the librarian, shield is very handy, but the vast majority of the time I’ve been able to get cover through the conventional methods easily enough. Particularly if you are willing to lose a model every now and then to dangerous terrain. Which I am.
The math says that the 5+ save versus 4+ with a dangerous terrain test on up to 3 models, evens out on casualties as soon as you suffer 3 wounds that need cover saves. Which is quite reasonable, I don’t generally mind if one marine gets insta-gibbed by a melta gun or single missile. It’s really only when a squad of melta/plasma/missiles opens up that you need your cover. At which point you’ll be taking more than three (and may even consider going to ground). You can also run into the cover, minimising the number of dangerous terrain tests required, particularly if you’re close enough to walk back out....though that doesn’t happen too often.
So, it’s possible that the librarian is a crutch, that I could instead rely on decent terrain/table setup and/or just rely on working around it.
But at the moment I can’t come up with a better use for that 125 points. The Librarian doesn’t just bring the shield after all, he also brings 4 S10 attacks, that are at I5....which is substantially better than a power-fist.
I’m becoming, without the chance to playtest, more and more convinced that Mephiston is needed, the army needs someone to deal efficiently with the nastier enemy characters, and I feel fairly confident I can get him completely out of line of sight, just using my other infantry since he’s on a standard base and they are all wearing jump packs for extra bulkiness.
Bit concerned my use of sanguinary guard models as sergeants may upset people, likewise my use of vanguard models as standard assault marines. I’m hopeful that if I can find some banners or make them i can mount them on the vanguard models and thereby make them look like characterful additions to the army.
Failing that I could always buy more regular assault marines since I really need them for the 2000 version of the list anyway.
I’m not sure. Which is the problem. I’m pretty sure I could take my Eldar and perform well, but I doubt that it is a ‘winnable’ tournament for Eldar under my usual evaluation criteria. The mission information is still not available and may not be until the day of the tournament.
Blood Angels I’m confident are capable of winning under almost any mission criteria using the army list I’m looking at.
Unfortunately I’m not as confident that blood angels with myself as general are as good as the theoretical general.
That said, after a period of soul-searching (an admittedly quite short period) I’ve decided to just run with the angels and see how it goes.
The current list is down to 5 squads of assault marines with meltas and a power weapon, mephiston, three priests and a librarian.
I’m not convinced that I actually need the librarian, shield is very handy, but the vast majority of the time I’ve been able to get cover through the conventional methods easily enough. Particularly if you are willing to lose a model every now and then to dangerous terrain. Which I am.
The math says that the 5+ save versus 4+ with a dangerous terrain test on up to 3 models, evens out on casualties as soon as you suffer 3 wounds that need cover saves. Which is quite reasonable, I don’t generally mind if one marine gets insta-gibbed by a melta gun or single missile. It’s really only when a squad of melta/plasma/missiles opens up that you need your cover. At which point you’ll be taking more than three (and may even consider going to ground). You can also run into the cover, minimising the number of dangerous terrain tests required, particularly if you’re close enough to walk back out....though that doesn’t happen too often.
So, it’s possible that the librarian is a crutch, that I could instead rely on decent terrain/table setup and/or just rely on working around it.
But at the moment I can’t come up with a better use for that 125 points. The Librarian doesn’t just bring the shield after all, he also brings 4 S10 attacks, that are at I5....which is substantially better than a power-fist.
I’m becoming, without the chance to playtest, more and more convinced that Mephiston is needed, the army needs someone to deal efficiently with the nastier enemy characters, and I feel fairly confident I can get him completely out of line of sight, just using my other infantry since he’s on a standard base and they are all wearing jump packs for extra bulkiness.
Bit concerned my use of sanguinary guard models as sergeants may upset people, likewise my use of vanguard models as standard assault marines. I’m hopeful that if I can find some banners or make them i can mount them on the vanguard models and thereby make them look like characterful additions to the army.
Failing that I could always buy more regular assault marines since I really need them for the 2000 version of the list anyway.
Evolution of an Ultimates list, part 3
Weekend just past got the chance to play a slight variant of my proposed ultimates list against a solid vulkan list, which i think is one of its less favoured matchups and is, conveniently, the one I play the most against since multiple friends use it. Terminators with thunder hammers (and rerolls) don’t care much about FNP, and they shut down libbys and preists pretty quick.
This time round I included the Sanguinor in place of a libby and chaplain. I wanted to try a couple of options, the first was the sanguinor. I suspected he wouldn’t be even close to worth it, on paper and in my head he didn’t cut it, but I wanted to try him on the tabletop and see how it went.
On the plus side he’s another ‘bubble’ of power, which sort of works synergistically with the existing bubbles as force multipliers. I guess the maths theory would be two things that increase effectiveness by 20% together increase by more than 40% (approximately 44% but thats not as dramatic as I’d like so lets call it 200%!!!) The downside is losing the chappy who is in himself quite the force multiplier and losing the second libby who was handy for his cc but also handy for the backup shield which you sometimes need to get through psychic defence or if you are prone to failing LD tests.
In return though the sanguinor gives you:
-One nerfed opposition character (hello vulkan)
-One talented mofo in close combat
-One souped up sarge
-A bubble of extra attacks
To fit him in I also had to cut out power fists. As it turned out, they would have been handy, though probably not very handy. The melta bombs i considered WOULD have been handy. Several times I ended up in base contact with an immobile land-raider and simply had nothing that could hurt it.
So, first, the two games I ended up playing:
His list was:
Vulkan
10 assault termies split in two
Two raider redeemers
3 tac squads in rhinos
1 land speeder
Mine was
Sanguinor
Libby
5 x 10 assault marines with 2 melta and a power weapon
3 priests with power weapons
First game was objectives. I got to within 22” or so, he came forward, dumped termies and wiped a squad or two, I dropped everything into the termies and wiped them in return, Sanguinor took down vulkan after I got a bit lucky on the two raiders and then multi-charged his marines to win the game narrowly.
The second game was kill points, he put one raider forward and the other back which i thought was a mistake at the time, it looked like the game was mine at the start of his fifth...until his two remaining rhinos landed two shocks each and ran both my full remaining squads (With all three priests attached) off the board essentially (with some shepherding from his land speeder). The sanguinor did his thing through the first four turns and was still upright on a couple of wounds with two full squads and three priests (the libby died to vulkan) going into my fifth, against a land speeder (that had played hidey all game) and two tac squads with two rhinos. Looked rosey for me, my turn was going to wipe the board....until he launched tank shocks through both units with both rhinos. I failed, both ran, his speeder parked near them....five kill points going bye bye. Meanwhile his two tac squads and the storm bolters on the rhinos were enough to finish off the sanguinor. GG
So, what did I learn:
1. Again learnt (though I obviously didn’t learn it last time) that librarians die easy. Need to be more careful with them. May even have to give up on sword of sang and start using lance, simply because putting the bastard into close combat seems to result in his death every single freaking time.
2. The biggest lesson was one I’d suspected from my Eldar play, but had never had a real chance to test: Tank shock is the key to beating Blood Angel jumper armies easily. No good way to mitigate it either. The chaplain can give fearless and the Sanguinor ‘super-sarge’ gives you one Ld10 squad, but I failed the first on an 11 (which was the super sarge with two priests) and the second on a 10. Not much to do about that. Will have to try to position squads such that they cant easily be shocked. I need to be a LOT more careful about my melta placement, but even then, you cant shoot unless you pass the leadership test...
3. The sanguinor was definitely worth his points in the first game, probably made his value in the second. He gives the army something rock hard in CC (something with an invul....) and he boosts the effectiveness of everyone around him more than you’d think. The ‘super-sarge’ he gives the army is also more useful than expected. Extra initiative is gold, extra WS is gold and extra attack is obviously gold. He is also plain nastier in CC than I expected him to be. On the other side, this opponent didn’t have much by way of long range firepower. My belief is that he’s much more likely to die early in a game vs ranged enemy (obviously)
4. The lack of powerfist/melta bomb meant my guys were definitely at a loss once in CC with a tank. They can deal with rhinos while FC is up, but raiders are an issue. Dread’s are an even bigger issue.
4. I didn’t miss the chaplain much, though without him the librarian effectiveness does drop dramatically and it looks like the blood lance might be a better option, or possibly unleash rage.
5. Librarians are squishy. Really, seriously squishy. Its very annoying.
6. I want psychic defence, I also need something that can threaten vehicles in CC and if possible draw fire from other targets.
7. I’d like to keep shield of sang in the army, though I’m not certain I use it as much as you’d think
8. I have not yet deployed off table and I’m not sure there are any circumstances where I would
So from these, I’m thinking my next iteration is to try Mephiston in place of libby+chappy. That means i’d have him and another librarian in the army, not sure if I need a normal librarian, but I’m not willing to give up shield yet.
The other option is changing out a priest into honour guard and running two libbys still
Libby x 2
Honour guard
5 x ASM
2 x priest
Vs
Meph
Libby
5 x asm
3 x preist
An advantage to Meph is that I have the model already, whereas I’d have to buy the sanguinor and/or a second libby.
He also is dead hard in CC and I suspect (haven’t tried it to be certain in a game) that he can be easily hidden completely from LOS using normal assault marines.
This time round I included the Sanguinor in place of a libby and chaplain. I wanted to try a couple of options, the first was the sanguinor. I suspected he wouldn’t be even close to worth it, on paper and in my head he didn’t cut it, but I wanted to try him on the tabletop and see how it went.
On the plus side he’s another ‘bubble’ of power, which sort of works synergistically with the existing bubbles as force multipliers. I guess the maths theory would be two things that increase effectiveness by 20% together increase by more than 40% (approximately 44% but thats not as dramatic as I’d like so lets call it 200%!!!) The downside is losing the chappy who is in himself quite the force multiplier and losing the second libby who was handy for his cc but also handy for the backup shield which you sometimes need to get through psychic defence or if you are prone to failing LD tests.
In return though the sanguinor gives you:
-One nerfed opposition character (hello vulkan)
-One talented mofo in close combat
-One souped up sarge
-A bubble of extra attacks
To fit him in I also had to cut out power fists. As it turned out, they would have been handy, though probably not very handy. The melta bombs i considered WOULD have been handy. Several times I ended up in base contact with an immobile land-raider and simply had nothing that could hurt it.
So, first, the two games I ended up playing:
His list was:
Vulkan
10 assault termies split in two
Two raider redeemers
3 tac squads in rhinos
1 land speeder
Mine was
Sanguinor
Libby
5 x 10 assault marines with 2 melta and a power weapon
3 priests with power weapons
First game was objectives. I got to within 22” or so, he came forward, dumped termies and wiped a squad or two, I dropped everything into the termies and wiped them in return, Sanguinor took down vulkan after I got a bit lucky on the two raiders and then multi-charged his marines to win the game narrowly.
The second game was kill points, he put one raider forward and the other back which i thought was a mistake at the time, it looked like the game was mine at the start of his fifth...until his two remaining rhinos landed two shocks each and ran both my full remaining squads (With all three priests attached) off the board essentially (with some shepherding from his land speeder). The sanguinor did his thing through the first four turns and was still upright on a couple of wounds with two full squads and three priests (the libby died to vulkan) going into my fifth, against a land speeder (that had played hidey all game) and two tac squads with two rhinos. Looked rosey for me, my turn was going to wipe the board....until he launched tank shocks through both units with both rhinos. I failed, both ran, his speeder parked near them....five kill points going bye bye. Meanwhile his two tac squads and the storm bolters on the rhinos were enough to finish off the sanguinor. GG
So, what did I learn:
1. Again learnt (though I obviously didn’t learn it last time) that librarians die easy. Need to be more careful with them. May even have to give up on sword of sang and start using lance, simply because putting the bastard into close combat seems to result in his death every single freaking time.
2. The biggest lesson was one I’d suspected from my Eldar play, but had never had a real chance to test: Tank shock is the key to beating Blood Angel jumper armies easily. No good way to mitigate it either. The chaplain can give fearless and the Sanguinor ‘super-sarge’ gives you one Ld10 squad, but I failed the first on an 11 (which was the super sarge with two priests) and the second on a 10. Not much to do about that. Will have to try to position squads such that they cant easily be shocked. I need to be a LOT more careful about my melta placement, but even then, you cant shoot unless you pass the leadership test...
3. The sanguinor was definitely worth his points in the first game, probably made his value in the second. He gives the army something rock hard in CC (something with an invul....) and he boosts the effectiveness of everyone around him more than you’d think. The ‘super-sarge’ he gives the army is also more useful than expected. Extra initiative is gold, extra WS is gold and extra attack is obviously gold. He is also plain nastier in CC than I expected him to be. On the other side, this opponent didn’t have much by way of long range firepower. My belief is that he’s much more likely to die early in a game vs ranged enemy (obviously)
4. The lack of powerfist/melta bomb meant my guys were definitely at a loss once in CC with a tank. They can deal with rhinos while FC is up, but raiders are an issue. Dread’s are an even bigger issue.
4. I didn’t miss the chaplain much, though without him the librarian effectiveness does drop dramatically and it looks like the blood lance might be a better option, or possibly unleash rage.
5. Librarians are squishy. Really, seriously squishy. Its very annoying.
6. I want psychic defence, I also need something that can threaten vehicles in CC and if possible draw fire from other targets.
7. I’d like to keep shield of sang in the army, though I’m not certain I use it as much as you’d think
8. I have not yet deployed off table and I’m not sure there are any circumstances where I would
So from these, I’m thinking my next iteration is to try Mephiston in place of libby+chappy. That means i’d have him and another librarian in the army, not sure if I need a normal librarian, but I’m not willing to give up shield yet.
The other option is changing out a priest into honour guard and running two libbys still
Libby x 2
Honour guard
5 x ASM
2 x priest
Vs
Meph
Libby
5 x asm
3 x preist
An advantage to Meph is that I have the model already, whereas I’d have to buy the sanguinor and/or a second libby.
He also is dead hard in CC and I suspect (haven’t tried it to be certain in a game) that he can be easily hidden completely from LOS using normal assault marines.
General thoughts
Some points on this blog in general:
-I am not a blogger by anything vaguely resembling profession. My apologies, but the update schedule is random, unreliable.
-As a result of the above, I cant guarantee the quality of the posts. I post what interests me, crosses my mind or is forced out of my mind by me sitting down to force myself to write.
-I will tag the posts as best I can to sort them, but there is no plan in terms of pattern of release and topic.
-I may swear. I'm not expecting to, but its quite possible, even likely. If you are desperately averse to swearing, then I'd suggest you get someone else to read the post first :P Or just dont read my blog
Some myths to dispel (although they are more 'general' myths about bloggers rather than specific pre-existing myths about myself)
-I've been playing since the 1990s, about 1994 I think.
-I havent played thousands of games
-I havent played using every army lots of times, many I have only played a very small number. In the case of Necrons i've probably only played using them less than 5 times.
-I certainly havent played lots of games with every army combination within the codices.
-Even the Eldar, who I've been playing for a very long time (since 1994 funnily enough) I still have probably not played every possible combination. Whether or not you need to have played every combination in order to predict how they will play and whether or not they will be good....well in my opinion you dont, but I accept that others may not feel that way.
-I'd estimate that I've played somewhere between 150 and 400 games of 40k, which I'd consider to be quite a lot. I'm certain many people have played a lot more, but I feel confident that a lot who claim to have played more, havent.
-I've played in the vicinity of 20 tournaments. I doubt its much more than that. I have no idea if thats a lot or not. Its certainly enough for me to have developed strong opinions on what can affect tournaments :)
I guess what I'm trying to make clear is that this blog is my opinion. Based on my experience. If you disagree, please explain why as clearly and reasonably as you can.
I would welcome other peoples opinions and experience (who am I kidding, this blog has a readership of 0 so its a moot point :P ) and I'm eager to see what other people's experience of the game is.
It seems many other players who use the Eldar have a different experience to mine, this has become evident in the YTTH forums, the westgamer forums and the BOLS forums as easy examples.
Hopefully even those who dont find my opinions in line with their experience can still find something of interest to discuss or think about here.
Enjoy.
-I am not a blogger by anything vaguely resembling profession. My apologies, but the update schedule is random, unreliable.
-As a result of the above, I cant guarantee the quality of the posts. I post what interests me, crosses my mind or is forced out of my mind by me sitting down to force myself to write.
-I will tag the posts as best I can to sort them, but there is no plan in terms of pattern of release and topic.
-I may swear. I'm not expecting to, but its quite possible, even likely. If you are desperately averse to swearing, then I'd suggest you get someone else to read the post first :P Or just dont read my blog
Some myths to dispel (although they are more 'general' myths about bloggers rather than specific pre-existing myths about myself)
-I've been playing since the 1990s, about 1994 I think.
-I havent played thousands of games
-I havent played using every army lots of times, many I have only played a very small number. In the case of Necrons i've probably only played using them less than 5 times.
-I certainly havent played lots of games with every army combination within the codices.
-Even the Eldar, who I've been playing for a very long time (since 1994 funnily enough) I still have probably not played every possible combination. Whether or not you need to have played every combination in order to predict how they will play and whether or not they will be good....well in my opinion you dont, but I accept that others may not feel that way.
-I'd estimate that I've played somewhere between 150 and 400 games of 40k, which I'd consider to be quite a lot. I'm certain many people have played a lot more, but I feel confident that a lot who claim to have played more, havent.
-I've played in the vicinity of 20 tournaments. I doubt its much more than that. I have no idea if thats a lot or not. Its certainly enough for me to have developed strong opinions on what can affect tournaments :)
I guess what I'm trying to make clear is that this blog is my opinion. Based on my experience. If you disagree, please explain why as clearly and reasonably as you can.
I would welcome other peoples opinions and experience (who am I kidding, this blog has a readership of 0 so its a moot point :P ) and I'm eager to see what other people's experience of the game is.
It seems many other players who use the Eldar have a different experience to mine, this has become evident in the YTTH forums, the westgamer forums and the BOLS forums as easy examples.
Hopefully even those who dont find my opinions in line with their experience can still find something of interest to discuss or think about here.
Enjoy.
Evolution of an Ultimates list, part 2
Got a couple of games in with the list this weekend gone and it functioned well, the deathstar unit is quite effective, but I’ve identified a few issues with the list:
- The use of a deathstar (of sorts) makes it feel a bit make-or-breaky, as if all the eggs are in one basket which I guess is to be expected, and wouldn’t be such a problem if the deathstar didn’t have a couple of serious weaknesses.
- Librarians have no invulnerable, and have 2 wounds. They are bait for anything at S8, but also bait for anything that can deliver 2 power weapon wounds on T4. The power-fist problem is real, but not actually the biggest issue in my opinion.
- Chaplains have an invulnerable, which is good. They are still bait for S8 but less of a target when in a unit with libbys.
-The real issue is Initiative. The whole unit is initiative 4, 5 on the charge. That’s pretty standard, which is the problem. Anything with I of 5 or higher will generally kill your librarian. Vulkan is the example that caused me the most trouble.
So the problem is this: The squad has two libbys, a chaplain and a priest plus its full assault squad. That’s pretty much overkill on anything you can find you would think. BUT.
Run it into 5 TH/SS termies with vulkan, even with you having the charge, and a bunch of problems pop up (similarly if you run into anything else that has higher initiative than you, whyches come to mind)
First problem is: How do you distribute your attacks? Everything in the squad against you will instagib the librarian, except for vulkan....who fights before the librarian, at S6 with a power weapon...
So you have three IC’s that are subject to death if they are left with a termie, and only one non-termie for you to target.
-If you put both libbys on vulkan, he kills at least one, possibly both (which is disastrous) , the remaining one has a pretty good chance of killing him, but not a VERY good chance. On average you’ll put 3 wounds on him, which is about a one in three chance of him living. If he lives, you’re in serious trouble.
-If you put both libbys on vulkan then your chaplain, sarge and priest have to, with the aid of the squad, kill all five termies or you lose your priest and possibly the chappie too if you’re unlucky. The odds say that at best you’ll kill 2-3 with your power weapons, leaving 2-3 to be killed by general attacks....which is doable certainly, you should hit with 22 or so and wound with 15ish. Thats 2.5 dead....
-If you go the other way and drop everything on the squad, giving vulkan just the normal marines to kill, then the odds say you will destroy the squad, vulkan will kill 3-4 and lose by 1-2. He’ll hold most likely and you’ll have to put the libbys in contact with him in the next phase and he’ll have a selection of targets. Probably killing the priest and a librarian. Though he may go for the double libby kill.
So either way you get through his squad, but you come out of it with quite possibly no librarians and a priest dead. If you’re relatively lucky.
If you’re unlucky, you lose both librarians and maybe a priest also.....not a good result for your deathstar, makes it a one-shot weapon and now you have no shield of sang.
On top of that, the fact that everything is at the same initiative means that the end effectiveness of the power weapons is reduced. In game I quite often do the characters separately, but that’s not correct and I’m cheating, I just often don’t think of it. If you do them as a single group, then the enemy gets a much better chance of dealing with it.
So the key problems I ran into were:
-Squad with whole group at similar initiative
-Initiative too low to deal efficiently with quality opposition CC characters
-Two wounds and no invulnerable makes the librarian very susceptible to being singled out and killed by even reasonably weak opponents, let alone solid opponents.
-Deathstar as a whole is a lot more susceptible to enemy CC than expected (Probably should have seen it coming)
On the plus side:
-Chaplain fearless gives a squad protection from tank shock
-The mini-deathstar is very difficult to shoot off the table, as predicted
So, from that I’ve decided to have a go at a couple of other options.
- The use of a deathstar (of sorts) makes it feel a bit make-or-breaky, as if all the eggs are in one basket which I guess is to be expected, and wouldn’t be such a problem if the deathstar didn’t have a couple of serious weaknesses.
- Librarians have no invulnerable, and have 2 wounds. They are bait for anything at S8, but also bait for anything that can deliver 2 power weapon wounds on T4. The power-fist problem is real, but not actually the biggest issue in my opinion.
- Chaplains have an invulnerable, which is good. They are still bait for S8 but less of a target when in a unit with libbys.
-The real issue is Initiative. The whole unit is initiative 4, 5 on the charge. That’s pretty standard, which is the problem. Anything with I of 5 or higher will generally kill your librarian. Vulkan is the example that caused me the most trouble.
So the problem is this: The squad has two libbys, a chaplain and a priest plus its full assault squad. That’s pretty much overkill on anything you can find you would think. BUT.
Run it into 5 TH/SS termies with vulkan, even with you having the charge, and a bunch of problems pop up (similarly if you run into anything else that has higher initiative than you, whyches come to mind)
First problem is: How do you distribute your attacks? Everything in the squad against you will instagib the librarian, except for vulkan....who fights before the librarian, at S6 with a power weapon...
So you have three IC’s that are subject to death if they are left with a termie, and only one non-termie for you to target.
-If you put both libbys on vulkan, he kills at least one, possibly both (which is disastrous) , the remaining one has a pretty good chance of killing him, but not a VERY good chance. On average you’ll put 3 wounds on him, which is about a one in three chance of him living. If he lives, you’re in serious trouble.
-If you put both libbys on vulkan then your chaplain, sarge and priest have to, with the aid of the squad, kill all five termies or you lose your priest and possibly the chappie too if you’re unlucky. The odds say that at best you’ll kill 2-3 with your power weapons, leaving 2-3 to be killed by general attacks....which is doable certainly, you should hit with 22 or so and wound with 15ish. Thats 2.5 dead....
-If you go the other way and drop everything on the squad, giving vulkan just the normal marines to kill, then the odds say you will destroy the squad, vulkan will kill 3-4 and lose by 1-2. He’ll hold most likely and you’ll have to put the libbys in contact with him in the next phase and he’ll have a selection of targets. Probably killing the priest and a librarian. Though he may go for the double libby kill.
So either way you get through his squad, but you come out of it with quite possibly no librarians and a priest dead. If you’re relatively lucky.
If you’re unlucky, you lose both librarians and maybe a priest also.....not a good result for your deathstar, makes it a one-shot weapon and now you have no shield of sang.
On top of that, the fact that everything is at the same initiative means that the end effectiveness of the power weapons is reduced. In game I quite often do the characters separately, but that’s not correct and I’m cheating, I just often don’t think of it. If you do them as a single group, then the enemy gets a much better chance of dealing with it.
So the key problems I ran into were:
-Squad with whole group at similar initiative
-Initiative too low to deal efficiently with quality opposition CC characters
-Two wounds and no invulnerable makes the librarian very susceptible to being singled out and killed by even reasonably weak opponents, let alone solid opponents.
-Deathstar as a whole is a lot more susceptible to enemy CC than expected (Probably should have seen it coming)
On the plus side:
-Chaplain fearless gives a squad protection from tank shock
-The mini-deathstar is very difficult to shoot off the table, as predicted
So, from that I’ve decided to have a go at a couple of other options.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)