Legion of the Damned...who needs traits?
Posted by Garrett, Mar 25 2008, 10:29 AM
Hmmm. Well, I spent two days playing random armies and I'm drifting towards going back to my Legion of the Damned for the GT, as they play more consistently. Also, it could be the last hurrah for 6 man and two AC squads.
I think I need s'more playtesting.
I pulled the Legion out to amuse myself at the last friday tournament and I crushed the Black Templars. No really:
The two piles in the foreground are our respective dead piles after the game. I actually felt bad about it.
The second game was much more brutal. It was against Chaos, and the game came down to Fabius Bile vs my Master in terminator armor. The master failed to die, so I won by 30 points. Yes, in the real world it's a draw, but for our tournaments it's a win.
A shot from that:
The next day I took the Salamanders against the same army, I'll post that tomorrow.
vs Orks...Or: Wow, that sucked.
Posted by Garrett, Mar 1 2008, 01:18 AM
I finally got a matchup against a horde Ork army, and damn, it hurt.
The trukks were upgraded to battlewagons with deffrollers to make up some points and bring him up to 1750.
The first couple turns he spent moving up to about the building in the middle.
I had to make a choice about which side I was going to try to split, and chose the left, which turned out to be bad, as the wagon with the nobs was on that side. and it hurt. alot.
I broke the mob on the left but failed to do anything serious to the 'wagon. the rest of the ork army started lurching my way, but I was out of LoS so the mekboy and his Shokk Attack Gun (the metal figure in the building).
The Deffroller accounted for two drop pods, a terminator and about six marines. I hate deffrollers. Or my dice hate me. Either way, it sucks.
At this point, it was rapidly becoming a desperate holding action on my part, against the Nobs who were rampaging through my closely packed units. They accounted for a couple tactical squads and the Librarian's command squad, including the Librarian. he might need a Admantium Mantle.
With the rest of the Ork army rapidly approaching from the side I knew the game was over for me, but I pressed on. Because I'm dumb.
The Assault squad and the just-arrived tactical squad were the last of my scoring units, everything else having been beaten into submission. They were also my only squads with more than two guys in them.
At this point I had pretty much secured the left half of the board, but with two turns left, no way was I ready to take on the other mob of boys backed up by Flash Gitz, plus another battlewagon with a mob. Ha! Last stand time.
Ultimately, I did ok. had the Nobs been elsewhere, or had I managed to do more than scratch the paint on the battlewagon for two turns things likely would have gone better for me. As it was I was forced to keep committing troops to the left side in an attempt to bolster my units that kept dying horribly. I probably should have sent the second wave at the Flash Gitz, consequences be damned, but I became fixated on my plan of securing the flank and pushing in.
Not that it likely would have changed much. Still though.
New Orks hurt. I'm hoping that theres not a whole lot of them at the GT, but we'll see.
not suprised.
Posted by Garrett, Feb 17 2008, 11:38 PM
So I was going over the 2008 GT rules - they took the Deathwatch off the list of approved allies.
Which leaves me with 220 points to do something with.
My first response (and the one I'll probably run with) is to do another 5 man terminator squad, with two heavy flamers.
Alternately, I could upgrade all the sergeants to Thunder Hammers, throw in a Chaplain, and buy a scout squad with a teleport homer.
Or, I could pick up another tac squad, but that means having to get another drop pod and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
I considered expanding the Land Speeder Squadron to two or three, but the part where I'd have to field them as one squadron kinda defeats the purpose of having more than one, by my reckoning at least.
So, this week I'll be disassembling my Thunder Hammer Terminator squad, and painting up some arms so I can field the 2xFlamer squad.
It's my primary choice because it's like the heavy bolters, just with a shorter range. and since the entire point of the Deathwatch squad was the heavy bolters, there you go. Also, despite it being 220 points, it would be the squad that I'd be most likely to drop in front of the enemy and pray I didn't deviate into them, a tactic that is high risk/high reward or just fail, depending. Since the rest of the army is a gamble, and I'm fond of not-entirely predictable craziness, I don't really see a problem with it.
...but it'd be a hell of an adventure against a Tau gun line.
Vs Sisters...With a pic!
Posted by Garrett, Feb 4 2008, 10:17 AM
So I had to change one of my tires, which meant that I got there a few minutes late, which gave me the bye.
Now, normally the points one gets for the by is the average of 1st and 2nd places, since they were just 18 points apart, I was sitting on 1909. Not bad for lazing about with a Monster Assault and dishing out rules clarifications.
But I still had to play the second game, and I went up against the third place player, playing Sisters of Battle, and fresh off a truly scary massacre of the Tau.
And screaming through my head was:
Static in my head
Lines blur red
Got my mind made up
And my trigger finger ready to blow
Finger on the trigger I'm a barrel of a gun
Ready to blow
Which is from KMFDM's 'Ready to Blow'
Anyway.
Clever man, he collected all his models in the middle of the board, with a maxed out unit of Sisters Repentia on a hill, and screened by everything else. Luring behind the hill was a squad of seraphim, with the army general.
The scenario was the GT one where the generals have to end each turn close than they started. No worries, mine would be arriving shortly.
He won the dice off and chose to go second. His first turn consisted of doing...nothing. Fair enough.
Now, I find Sisters annoying. They're not really great at sticking up in a combat, considering that marines hit them on 3s and wound on 3s and can dish out a world of pain, that being said however, the Repentia needed to die.
Even the Exorcist paled in comparison to them. It was going to cost me, perhaps dearly.
Turn two saw all three Tactical Squads, the Dread, the Deathwatch, and the Terminators come in. Now, exactly how Repentia have a 4+ save when they're not really wearing clothes eludes me, however it was ok as all my AP4 weapons came in. Every squad that came in shot at the Repentia.
The end result?
Witness:
Then, as expected, I was assaulted. even with their crazy faith mojo and ap1-sometimes flamers none of my squads broke. I lost two terminators to the Exorcist (and, as an aside, that pic is right before his turn 3 assault).
Everything from then on pretty much went my way, with the rest of my army showing up on turn 3 and my Librarian's squad pretty much shooting the Seraphim to death. Turn 4 saw his grey knights led by Captain Stern show up, and shoot my Librarian and his squad to death, but I had eliminated enough of his army that all my shooting focused on them then a quick assault finished them off.
Turn 5 consisted of mopping up the last three of his models on the board.
Total: 1850vp (1750 for the wipe +100 for killing his army general.)
Giving me enough points to win 1st overall this week. I'll enjoy it while it lasts, my Tomb Kings never seem to do very well and this week will be WFB.
Thoughts:
I finally figured out what had been bothering me about this army. The way we play the tournaments (2 rounds, total VPs) doesn't work all that well with the crazy drop-pod action because you tend to lose a lot of guys, giving up a horde of VPs. I mean, yeah, you can win, for sure, but the total VP spread isn't usually that different.
I'd also like to point out that I'm pretty sure the only reason i won was because i took out the Repentia with a single minded passion. Had they assaulted en masse it would have taken my army apart.
Also, I'd like to give the nod to my Squad sergeants with the powerfists, as they killed enough sisters to tip the combats in my favor. One day, I might even stop feeling guilty about not giving them Thunder Hammers.
vs Calgar and his little blue men.
Posted by Garrett, Jan 28 2008, 01:32 PM
I now have all the drop pods I need, so my only pressing concern is how much does a Thunderhawk weigh?
I made a rough comparison holding my cat (16 lbs) in one hand (and he wasn't too happy, oh no, he was not), and the 'Hawk in the other and I'm guessing 17-18lbs. This only matters because I'm considering using it as the centerpiece for the display tray but...damn, thats a lot of resin to be carting around - 5 pods and one 'Hawk plus the minis, about a third of which are metal - I'm not sure thats even worth it. Impressive, for sure, but wise...thats up for debate.
Anyway.
So I got in a game yesterday, mostly just to experiment with my librarian (It should be noted that my armies are usually led by a commander and a chaplain, I almost never use Librarians).
Vs Ultramarines, led by Calgar himself, and he was carting around a 7 strong terminator squad. Also coming along - a venerable dreadnought, a terminator squad with lightning claws led by a chaplain, a vindicator some scouts, a couple of tactical squads, and an assault squad.
I went second.
On the right side of the board was the assault squad, one of the tactical squads, the Venerable Dread, and the Vindicator. everything else was center-left with the scouts holding a building in the middle. Calgar and crew came in at the top of turn 2, and were placed off on the extreme left.
At this point, I inwardly smiled, I could concentrate on the right side and, assuming I rolled better than my last game, I could hammer that flank and perhaps roll up the entire flank. All while Calgar had to walk across the board. yay!
So, everything except my dread, assault squad, and Deathwatch came in on turn 2. More than I actually wanted to see, but enough to crush the opposition (Hopefully). I put the pods down in a rough line about 1/3rd of the way in from the right board edge. The pods all scattered, the one with the command squad ending up next to the building with the scouts, and one of the tactical squads ending up in front of the assault squad.
In the shooting phase I managed to take out the Vindicator, the venerable dread, and four marines from the tactical squad. The librarian got Fear of the Dark off, but the scouts refused to fall back.
His other Terminator squad showed up, roughly in the middle of my deployed units. 'No worries' I thought 'My terminators can deal with them.'
His return shooting was fairly weak seeing as most of his units were lacking LOS. Of course, he killed two Terminators with bolters, proving that my dice hate me. Then his assault squad beat down the tac squad near them, failing to kill all of them, the sergeant killed two assault marines, then passed the morale test.
The Deathwatch arrived, and I put them in the path of Calgar, if nothing else, the Captain might kill a couple with his lightning claws. I put down the assault squad near his assault squad, hopefully out of assault rangeand my dread failed to show (In fact, it wouldn't appear until turn 6 - just in time to AC down a couple guys.). I moved one of the tactical squads to try to stop Calgar before he got to assault the Deathwatch.
My shooting killed all of one terminator, while I lost two plasma gunners (again. Thats the third game in a row.). The Deathwatch hammered a tac squad that was nearby, killing all of one of them. The Librarian once again got off FotD, the Chaplain's squad was fearless, and the Scouts once again failed to run.
I debated assaulting with the Librarian's squad, but ultimately didn't, not for any particular reason, but it just didn't feel right. So I threw my Terminators at his. He inflicted three wounds on my three terminators...and I failed all the saves. His assault squad once again failed to kill my sergeant, who killed two more of his marines. The squad that was to intercept Calgar assaulted the intervening tactical squad. They won the combat, but the Ultramarines failed to break. Calgar and crew would be in assault range next turn, so I had to hope he'd stop and counter assault.
He did. And my squad threw ALL their attacks at Calgar himself. The Sergeant instant deathed him, then got wiped. On the other side of the board the LC terminators attempted to eat a tactical squad, but failed and the sergeant killed the Chaplain. My luck was amazing, and I could only hope it held.
In my next shooting phase the librarian made the squad formerly guarding Calgar fall back, taking them out of the game as they wouldn't be able to regroup in their fall back corridor as I had a live drop pod there. Of course, the scouts failed to run.
The Deathwatch finished off the Tactical squad in front of them, while the librarian's squad shot up the scouts, killing four of the five. I finally managed to eliminate the LC terminator squad and the last couple assault marines. At this point his only unbroken units were his lone scout and one marine off on the right side that I'd been ignoring.
---
Thoughts:
At the end of this game I had all of three scoring units, which made me a bit edgy but but would have been more than sufficient had it been a tournament game.
It's still a toss-up as to if I'm being too aggressive. The Librarian was totally worth it, and FotD may just be my new favorite thing.
I failed to roll up the flank, but I tied up all the units on the right and forced him to react to most of my army appearing there - dictating the terms of the engagement. His attempt to retake the momentum by dropping the LC terminators was a sketchy moment, but their failure to be effective pretty much gave me the game.
I also got lucky with Calgar failing all his invulnerable saves, further proving that you should not take him in Terminator armor even though the model id pretty. I mean, seriously, I'd prefer the 4+ save.
I think I need to play against Orks, and guard would probably be good too.
Why won't it die?
Posted by Garrett, Jan 24 2008, 07:47 AM
So for game two the top two in total VPs were matched. I was sitting on 2150, and Sean had 1950.
And Tyranids. Big, big, Tyranids. And there was a couple small squads of 'Gaunts. But mostly big Tyranids.
The mission was Recon, which, I figured, wouldn't be too big a deal as i could place my entire army in his DZ. All I had to do was kill a couple things and hold on four turns. Sounds easy.
I remembered to go second this time and he started spreading out. The two tooled up Carnifexes were on the right, and drifting near a forest. I promptly dropped all three tactical squads and the command squad between them, most of which landed on-target or close to it. After all the firing was done, one carnifex had three wounds, and I had lost two plasma gunners to overheats.
This was bad. Real bad. I was counting on killing one of them the turn I came in and throwing everything else at the second one in CC. The rest of the army was far enough away that it would be a turn or two until they got there, but now I was totally messed up.
during his assault phase the evil, evil Tyranids began to...move towards my DZ. Mostly. I had a squad of Tyranid warriors coming at me, and those two thrice-damned Carnifexes. In the assault phase I lost one complete squad and another was reduced to two marines. I, of course, did one wound to the unwounded 'Fex.
The wounded one consolidated into my command squad.
The rest of my army came in and the only useful stuff was the Deathwatch squad killing almost all of the Hormagaunt squad and the dread killing two Tyranid warriors. Over on the right I lost my librarian and got the 'Fex up to four wounds. The other 'Fex finished off the squad he was beating on and moved towards the rapidly expanding melee around the Nigh-Unkillable 'Fex.
Pretty much, at this point it was game over for me. The Carnifexes obliterated all the squads dropped near them and were moving towards the Terminators. The Terminators and the Dread killed the Warriors, the Land Speeder put one wound on the other Carnifex, and If the game had gone on to turn seven I would have been wiped out.
Interestingly the stuff I managed to kill gave me a total of 880 VP's (Including half for both 'Fexes) He got almost 1100. I thought my points were a bit high, but the Carnifexes were totally tooled up monstrosities of monsterousness.
Thoughts:
I dont think I lost this because I was being too aggressive, in fact, had the dice gods been a little kinder it would have worked for me just fine, however, because of being so overly aggressive I really didnt hava a workable plan B. Sean was thrown off at first, but quickly recovered when it became a typical CC fest. Overall, I have no real problem with how this game played out.
Well, ok, I'm contemplating some new dice.
First Test.
Posted by Garrett, Jan 24 2008, 07:05 AM
For starters, anyone who might be reading this who isn't me should know that for 2007 GT Vegas I played an all shooting Legion of the Damned army. Limited mobility was provided by an assault squad, some terminators and a Land Speeder. I went 3/2 with both losses being to Eldar heavy on tanks and harlequins.
So for this year I've pulled my Salamanders out (they never really went away, just on hiatus) and gone in the complete opposite direction. This year I'm going for all deep strike/drop pods on the theory that it'll either win in spectacular fashion or lose in spectacular fashion.
Currently the list looks like this:
HQ:
Librarian w/Storm of the Emperor's Wrath and Fear of the Dark and a BP
Command Squad, 7 marines, Vet Sergeant w/BP/PF, 1xMelta, 1xPlasma 4xBP & CCW
Drop Pod
Deathwatch Squad
Captain w/Lightning Claws
6xMarines, 2xHeavy Bolters w/suspensors, 5xBolters
Elite:
Terminator Squad
5xMarines, 2xAssault Cannon, 2x SB/PF, 1 Sergeant w/SB & Power Weapon
Dreadnought w/Assault Cannon/DCCW/SB
Drop Pod
Troops:
Tactical Squad 1
7xMarines, 1 Vet Sergeant w/PF/BP, 1 Melta, 1 Plasma, 4xBolter
Drop Pod
Tactical Squad 2
7xMarines, 1 Vet Sergeant w/PF/BP, 1 Melta, 1 Plasma, 4xBolter
Drop Pod
Tactical Squad 3
7xMarines, 1 Vet Sergeant w/PF/BP, 1 Melta, 1 Flamer, 4xBolter
Drop Pod
Fast Attack:
Assault Squad
7x Marines, 1 Vet Sergeant w/PF/BP, 1 Flamer, 5 BP/CCW
Land Speeder
Assault Cannon
The utility of the Assault Cannons will be cut down come 5th edition, but they're still pretty sexy by my reckoning. The only seriously unorthodox choice in there is the Deathwatch Squad, but against Eldar, Tyranids and other crunchy armies a unit of Deathwatch teleporting in behind them with two heavy bolters is often enough to swing turns, and, occasionally, the game.
First battle.
Posted by Garrett, Jan 24 2008, 07:05 AM
My FLGS (Dark Tower Comics) holds 40K and Warhammer Fantasy (Tomb Kings FTW!) tournaments on alternating weeks, and some of the best people I've ever played with show up there so using armies against them is a decent gauge of how well the list will do in the world at large.
Seriously - If you don't believe me I'm sure ODM will back me up go find him in the Dark Angels forum. Just ask him about Lance.
Anyway, so we're currently playing 1750 tournaments. Here's the first time I brought this army out:
Game 1.
Playing my nemesis, Eldar.
Because it was my first time playing the army and old habits died hard, I won the roll for first turn and opted to go first...like as not because I'm dumb. and I forgot that going second was a cardinal goal of drop pod armies. On the bright side, it didn't really mess me up but I made a mental note to be more careful in the future.
So on turn two fully half my army comes down and I'm looking at the board and all thats out there is two Wave Serpents and Three Falcons. And I'm just thinking that I am so completely borked if this turn goes badly. So I drop two pods in a forest that two of the tanks (Falcon and Serpent) have their back to.
The Dreadnought goes all the way across the board near a building (Hopefully to draw some fire) and the 'Speeder drops behind the forest where the two drop pods went.
Miracle of miracles, the only thing that deviates is the 'Speeder and it ends up a good 1/4" from the table edge. No worries.
The two tactical squads open up each on one tank, on the rear armor, and I succeeded in immobilizing the Serpent. The Falcon takes three glancing hits which make it very not shooting (I have a serious hate thing about Falcons, they're fine in Epic, but in 40K they make me cry). The 'Speeder opens up on another of the Falcons, glancing it and then rolling two 6es. It dies (yay!), and the Fire Dragons it was carrying are entangled.
In his turn two Eldrad jumped out of the immobilized Serpent with a squad of ablative guardians and promptly beat senseless the squad that shot thier tank. Suprisingly, the Sergeant lived AND passed his morale test. A squad of Dire Avengers jumped out of the not-shooting Falcon and promptly hit me with 22 wounds, of which I failed...7 - eliminating the squad.
Back to me - The rest of my army came in. The Deathwatch squad taking a hill on his left flank, the terminators going over near the Dreadnought for some extra fire support the last two drop pods one came down near Eldrad and the other deviated to the very edge of the board...and the assault squad went near the Warp Spiders, because something needed to be done about them.
So the Librarian and his squad jump out of the 'pod and use fear of the darkness. Eldrad's squad breaks and runs 10"...right towards the drop pod at the edge of the board. The Dire Avengers also broke and ran in the same direction, but not as far.
The Terminators saw off the rest of the Dire Avengers (because I wasn't sure if they were within 6" of the drop pod, while the dread started exchanging shots with one of the Falcons. The squad that was in the drop pod at the edge of the board fired at the Fire Dragons, the assault squad fired at the Warp Spiders and at the end of it all, I had killed two Eldar and the immobile Serpent.
Eldrad fell back off the board, making my life oh, so much easier. The remaining Fire Dragons and Warp Spiders first shot up the squad standing next to the drop pod then assaulted them, wiping them out. The tank and the Dreadnought continued to play tag.
From here it was all downhill really, i managed to kill all eight foot troops then spent the rest of the game chasing the tanks around, finally finishing the last ones in turn 6.
Total VP:
Me 2150 (1750+100 per table quarter)
Him: 580
Thoughts:
It's possible I was too aggressive. Drop Pods take the thinking out of Deep Strike because it doesn't matter where they go, they'll live. Turn two went well for me though. it Helped immensely that I took out the Fire Dragons Transport and had them out for a couple turns. Man of the match goes to my librarian for breaking the Eldar advance with Fear of the Dark. If they hadn't run, I'd have been shooting, and shooting, and shooting at them so it cleared up a lot of firepower for use elsewhere. For now I'll keep it. I am vaguely contemplating taking Might of Heroes instead, but that has limited utility.
The second game was against Nidzilla, which I lost, and i'll post the report later, because it's 1.38AM and I want to go to bed.