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[HH1.0] Iron Warriors Tactics


AfroCampbell

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Sadly, we don't get good melee characters - but now we don't get good ranged or support characters anymore either!

 

...I guess it's time to just play by the imperial fists rules :sad.:

 

- till the bitter end

- tank hunter support squads with the added benefit of +1BS bolters for everyone

- stubborn in fortifications

- cheap 3++ storm shields

- bonus in challenges

- good melee units/special characters

Edited by Nehekhare
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I'm looking at a Forge Lord with Conversion Beamer as a complement to my backfield Firestorm Redoubt Havocs.  More expensive than my old Master of Signal, but still pretty good.  In higher points games, Kyr Vhalen appeals to me more, but I feel like he's a melee character who can't go toe-to-toe with other Praetors.  Bringing him to unlock my Master of Signal is something I'm considering, or putting him with the Havocs to deter outflankers.  All the same, that's a pretty lousy use of nigh on 200 points.  Has anyone used him effectively?

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why give a power weapon to a guy with a servo-arm? For the same points, you get a generic Centurion in Cataphractii TDA with a Thunder hammer or Chainfist, and a praetor with paragon blade isn't far away now either. None of those exactly exel at melee and can't do anything else (battlesmith doesn't count).

If something costs as much as 2 Tyrant Siege Terminators but doesn't do as much, I'm not convinced. 

Edited by Nehekhare
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Because I find it a laugh he has a chance to instant death marines if they fail an armour save at initiative. I play for fun not to always win all the time and with his servo arm I can keep my dreadnought alive if needed or whatever :) 

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Well, I doubt you'll use it often over the AP2 servoarm, but if anything else means less fun for you, then go ahead! :smile.:

 

because the servo-arm is only 1 bonus power fist attack and a power weapon affects your regular attacks.  30k servo arm =/= 40k C:SM servo arm

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because the servo-arm is only 1 bonus power fist attack and a power weapon affects your regular attacks. 

 

True, one should not judge on the weapon summary chart alone! So the Forgelord actually isn't good at all...

 

We have to take a look at the less fluffy choices then:

- Chaplain: a rhino for a power weapon and zealot. Okay in a big unit I guess. Nothing but Artificer Armor to protect him, though.

- Champion: please.

- Vigilator: infiltrate one unit, hand over warlord freely.

- Naked Centurion: Cataphractii TDA would be the minimum. Does absolutely nothing, waste of points. 

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Dude, you have to be 42" away for the beamer to get decent S/AP - that is almost the whole board! and then it's only a small blast!

 

to further add insult to injury, the forgelord then costs 5 points more than a whirlwind scorpius...go figure.

 

this is a bad, bad choice.

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I thought more about the rules today and, mostly thanks to relics, there are a number of decent combos left. Your mileage will vary of course and many of these can be done better by other legions.

 

So in terms of HQs and builds I see these options:

  • Melee oriented chaplain in your choice of squad + delivery option. You can park this guy in a blob of 20 + apothecary and use the unit to soak up bullets. You can add in relics to tweak it even more.
  • Cheapo AA consul with one of the relics. The blind helm makes it very tough to charge against (so its good for something like iron havocs camping your backfield) and the void shield lets you shrug off some orbital bombardments or pie plates against things like rapier batteries or tactical squads. Basically, this guy carries a relic and buffs something.
  • Forgelord with a warp shunt field inside a large armored vehicle of your choice. Drive around, repair it, and make your opponent angry for fielding an unkillable vehicle.
  • Forgelord with cortex controller marching alongside + repairing some castellax. You can ally in admech to make them objective secured troops and have an archamgos double teaming the repair work.
  • Ally in admech and park a consul of your choice into an admech squad like thralls for tons of cheap wounds
  • Grab Golg to unlock terminators as troops and then use the Orbital Assault ROW. Turn 1, drop pod assault with Golg, then beam in all your terminators next to him. You can use relics to make this more interesting. This would work really well with, ironically, bikes or other fast attack units racing up the board.
  • Kyr and a bastion/defense line with some iron havocs parked inside. If you give him the black helm he becomes a really tough unit to charge. While costly, Kyr with a squad of 20 guys + some castellax/allied admech and the bastion in your backfield might be an interesting build.

True, one should not judge on the weapon summary chart alone! So the Forgelord actually isn't good at all...

 

We have to take a look at the less fluffy choices then:

- Chaplain: a rhino for a power weapon and zealot. Okay in a big unit I guess. Nothing but Artificer Armor to protect him, though.

- Champion: please.

- Vigilator: infiltrate one unit, hand over warlord freely.

- Naked Centurion: Cataphractii TDA would be the minimum. Does absolutely nothing, waste of points.

Remember that you can still give consul wargear unless it forbids it. So chaplains can get a 5++ refractor field or terminator armor, making him probably the best 'cheap' HQ option left. Problem is, Iron Warriors don't really need fearless anywhere :sad.:

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  • Melee oriented chaplain in your choice of squad + delivery option. You can park this guy in a blob of 20 + apothecary and use the unit to soak up bullets. You can add in relics to tweak it even more.  Best out of bad options as it seems. cataphractii is an option, but you lose the points you paid for the crozius. what relics do you have in mind?
  • Cheapo AA consul with one of the relics. The blind helm makes it very tough to charge against (so its good for something like iron havocs camping your backfield) and the void shield lets you shrug off some orbital bombardments or pie plates against things like rapier batteries or tactical squads. Basically, this guy carries a relic and buffs something. The relics are overcosted. Why give a guys a void shield that backfires when you can buy it for a little more than HALF the points on a fortification without drawbacks? Some fortification is recommended anyway.
  • Forgelord with a warp shunt field inside a large armored vehicle of your choice. Drive around, repair it, and make your opponent angry for fielding an unkillable vehicle. I don't think it works that way. Invul saves for passengers do not carry over to transports.
  • Forgelord with cortex controller marching alongside + repairing some castellax. You can ally in admech to make them objective secured troops and have an archamgos double teaming the repair work. Mech allies are good, but the forgelord is simply overcosted (2 techmarines = same points). Experience says repair doesn't happen very often anyway. If he could get an iron halo or paid less for cataphractii to account for the AA (or if the Warsmith could take a cyber-familiar) for an appropriately costed 3++, it would be another issue.
  • Ally in admech and park a consul of your choice into an admech squad like thralls for tons of cheap wounds Rather park an archmagos with your tac squad for stubborn Ld10 - ironically much better at melee than any of our HQs and also brings all the guns. I'd not put anything with cannon fodder unless they are stubborn or fearless.
  • Grab Golg to unlock terminators as troops and then use the Orbital Assault ROW. Turn 1, drop pod assault with Golg, then beam in all your terminators next to him. You can use relics to make this more interesting. This would work really well with, ironically, bikes or other fast attack units racing up the board. I'd rather have 1 TDA squad less and bring Perturabo instead.
  • Kyr and a bastion/defense line with some iron havocs parked inside. If you give him the black helm he becomes a really tough unit to charge. While costly, Kyr with a squad of 20 guys + some castellax/allied admech and the bastion in your backfield might be an interesting build. Vhalen is a special char and thus can't take relics. He gets all the toys, yet still doesn't bring much to the table, forces you to have IW as primary detachment, gives away extra VP, has a pretty standart fortification upgrade as WL trait, costs a boatload of points and will get eaten by melee chars.

Iron Warriors don't really need fearless anywhere :sad.:They do in melee. That's why stubborn is so good.

 

we pretty much agree that one should just play Mechanicum instead.

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What about just taking a cheap Siege Breaker for your HQ, stick him with your Tyrants to give them all tank hunters? That way you can take the regular killy Praetor and still take the RoW (if that's your thing) and not give up the extra VP if he gets on the wrong end of a fight. I think that the RoW isn't as bad as it looks, You gain one bonus attack at ranged that hits more often, and lose on attack in melee that doesn't hit as often. BS4=/=WS4vsWS4 and you can assault them with numbers (hopefully) on your side. In my opinion its a very fluffy RoW, you are using your guys basically as ammunition, which is what Perturabo was all about.

Edited by Kossaka
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Dude, you have to be 42" away for the beamer to get decent S/AP - that is almost the whole board! and then it's only a small blast!

 

to further add insult to injury, the forgelord then costs 5 points more than a whirlwind scorpius...go figure.

 

this is a bad, bad choice.

 

Neither a scorpius nor two techmarines fills my mandatory HQ slot, so I guess I'll stick to a Terminator Siege Breaker or a Conversion Beamer Forgelord.  Think of it this way: at least we have some good units, no Justaerin badness here.

Edited by Naryn
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yes, our special units and primarch are some of the best out there.

 

our Legion rules and RoW on the other hand are some of the worst.

 

I can live with an HQ that isn't the best fighter, but it should support our gunline qualities and carry its own weight pointswise. Because it is compulsory.

 

In another thread, kitwulfen asked for a rules rewrite of the non-functional/broken/bad relics from HH4. Here's my contribution:

 

Blind Helm of the Black Judges (45 pts, IW only)

Ignore the rules text*. The Helm incorporates a Cogis-signum and Nuncio-vox and confers the Bombardment special rule (CAL p. 17) to its bearer.

 

*which in fact says something entirely different.

Edited by Nehekhare
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I have really been turned on to the idea of a Siege Breaker Consul in Cataphractii armor escorting a unit of Tyrants. Seems like a fairly decent support HQ and he can take on minor opponents without too much trouble. I think he would work well in my meta anyway. Just got to figure out where to get the points.

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I try to avoid cortex controllers because they make your cybernetica worse at shooting.

 

siege breaker in tyrants makes some sense, but with a little extra gear he costs such ridiculous amount of points that you could instead just take 3 (!) more tyrants, which is double his attacks, 6 more missles and 150% of his wounds. Tank hunters is good, but not that good. forget rerolls, give them all chainfists and shoot AV14 with your havocs.

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Siege Breaker with Cataphractii and a chainfist runs about 140 points, and that's the only setup I would run him in. I don't think it's that expensive but the SB lacks anything outside of buffing something with tank hunters, but since so much of the Iron Warriors units and special rules gives us tank hunters it's almost pointless. I'm liking the "new" relic that was posted here(why didn't they just give us that I'll never know. I'm even ok having to give it to a warsmith to unlock it). But there might be an application that I'm missing for the relic that they gave us. At least they didn't give us the DA treatment with it, but ours seems very one dimensional. What are the thoughts of shrapnel bolts? Are they worth taking a heavy support squad or upgrading my tanks with sponsons for them? Edited by Kossaka
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yes, our special units and primarch are some of the best out there.

 

our Legion rules and RoW on the other hand are some of the worst.

 

I can live with an HQ that isn't the best fighter, but it should support our gunline qualities and carry its own weight pointswise. Because it is compulsory.

 

In another thread, kitwulfen asked for a rules rewrite of the non-functional/broken/bad relics from HH4. Here's my contribution:

 

Blind Helm of the Black Judges (45 pts, IW only)

Ignore the rules text. The Helm incorporates a Cogis-signum and Nuncio-vox and confers the Bombardment special rule (CAL p. 17) to its bearer.

So the Blind Helm lets us make a Master of Signal at the exact same cost as before, who will work exactly the same, and have a sweet anti-overwatch attack?

 

This is amazing.

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What are the thoughts of shrapnel bolts? Are they worth taking a heavy support squad or upgrading my tanks with sponsons for them?

 

Good in HH games where pinning is relevant and everything has 3+ armor anyway, bad against regular codices. I wouldn't upgrade anything specifically to get heavy bolters, shrapnel or not. IW generally don't field heavy support squads other than Havocs and they have them as standart, but should always upgrade to missle lauchers.

 

edit: note that, unfortunately, the real blind helm doesn't work the way I pictured it above, but in fact only provides 2d6 S5 AP3 overwatch shots at full BF for a slightly cheaper points cost. Yeah, we're all disappointed. 

Edited by Nehekhare
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While we are imagining cool rules we could have had, I always thought we'd get something like an army wide -1 or -2 to enemy cover saves caused by IW ordinance attacks. That would be such a better rule than getting wrecker on grenades *eye roll* Edited by Bulbafist
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