Fast, gun heavy, cult army

[rye0006]

Hi, I'm considering starting a cult army. I want to run a fast (bikes, vehicles, transports are all fine) and gun heavy army. What would people recommend in terms of an army list?

[Rogue]

Could you expand on that a little?

 

When you say 'gun heavy', do you mean 'lots of autoguns and lasguns', or guns that could actually damage something?

 

Are you looking to avoid infantry, minimise it so that you're completely mechanised, or include it if it's shooty or fast? (Our infantry units are rarely both)

[rye0006]

I'm thinking bikes and vehicles. Troops in transports and shooting out of them. I like the idea of the mining weapons and demolitions.

[Jorgend Lupus]

Hi,

 

I'd go for Rusted Claw Cult creed to maximize your bikers strength, first.

 

about the army list, I think I'd go for 3 Goliath trucks to transport 3 minimal neophytes squads ; a couple mining lasers and grenades launchers in each squad and you have some very decent fire power.

Get 3 Ride Runners too ; the models are great and they are simply our best fire platform for now !

At least 2 units of bikes, led by a Jackal Alphus and a Magus and you have a decent batallion for 1000pts games ;) !

(check the Rusted Claw Psychic Power from the Greater Good to make your Magus a firepower force multiplier)

[crownedzoidberg]

Ridgerunners are superfast 14" and do have a pre-game scout move, if you don't deploy them as a blip. They are too cheap not to run.

The Hivecult Warlord Trait gives a nice 6" Aura of rerolling 1s to hit while shooting. Many players give this to a warlord to hide between the buggies.

 

Chilling Efficiency (HIVECULT) adds another +1 to hit with shooting on an already wounded unit for 2CP.

 

In sum: Alphus marks a target, hopefully wounds it, giving it +1 to shoot, enabling the +1 to shoot stratagem - suddenly you have a wave of ridgerunners having BS2+ rerolling 1s within your warlords and alphus' Aura.

Edited November 26, 2020 by crownedzoidberg

[Closet Skeleton]

To hit modifiers don't stack so you're not hitting on 2s.

[Dr. Clock]

To hit modifiers don't stack so you're not hitting on 2s.

Indeed... It's still a decent solution to flush things out of cover as you'd be able to use the strat to remove the -1 to hit against lurkers. 3+ to hit on laser runners is still plenty in most cases!

 

Trucks and rockgrinders are both pretty decent for sure, but don't forget that infantry left off the board are a great solution for projecting units without taking incoming fire before they're in position. I've had games more or less won by a smallish unit of Neophytes with shotguns and flamers dropping behind enemy lines to threaten their home Objectives in turn 4/5!

 

In general I tend to take units of many different sizes to go do different things; I've got the big laser/grenade blobs (~16 is good so that you can continuously Reinforce them to keep them around alot longer) for DZ camping, the smaller mounted 'utility' Acolyte units (5+10), then usually a big blob of Perfect Ambush Acolyte bullies (mix of special ccws), and then the mid-size reserved shotgun/flamer 'Pioneer' unit.

 

If you don't want to run any unmounted infantry, then I'd be sure to throw some chimeras in the mix for sheer staying power, because trucks are not really that sturdy.

 

I could see a biker theme working quite well, although it will make you quite fragile indeed, upping the cannon, but also the glass... You would be able to effectively nuke a unit per turn with demo charges, but you'd have to commit basically all your CP to it, and there are things out there that would counter it pretty hard (basically anything that lets units interrupt the DS sequence or placement).

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[rye0006]

Cheers for this, some really helpful answers.

[rye0006]

I got a box of atalan jackals for Xmas, my first unit for my new army. It will be slow going, but the cult has started!

[Rogue]

Brilliant. Looking forward to seeing them.