Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Adepta Sororitas in 7th Edition Warhammer 40,000 vs. Mothra

The trick, as every new codex comes out, is to figure out how to keep the oldest ones competitive.

The Adepta Sororitas have (wrongly) been maligned since the very brief days before the WitchHunters codex.  Before that it was an EXTREMELY short lived book that got swallowed up by the new 3rd Edition of Warhammer 40K and effectively was no more than a unit entry that was basically a unit you could take with Space Marines.

The longest running iteration of the Sisters of Battle to date was the WitchHunters codex, which lasted eight years and is by far the most recognizably cogent version.  A White Dwarf version came out which diverged SUBSTANTIALLY from the Witch Hunters, eliminating its connection as an Inquisition force (a mistake in my opinion).  Finally the recent codex came out for 6th Edition.

So how do we keep this codex competitive in the face of things like Space Marine Battle Companies, Necron Decurions and Eldar WraithKnight spamming?

First and foremost we have to recognize the primary threats against it.

Foremost is the possibility of facing the ridiculum that is the WraithKnights, the Mothra of the 40K world right now.  One on its own is annoying but more become overwhelmingly effective.  The army has to be able to handle the threat of this and also handle the Imperial Knights.

Let me do some math for you.  Assuming you can bring it to bear at all, you'd need 18 wounds to kill three Wraith knights.  Assuming STR 8, that means you have to get 36 hits on average to kill three of them.  Starting to sound daunting?  At BS 4 that means 54 of these STR 8 shots.

I know what you're thinking:  WTF.  Accompanying these WraithKnights will no doubt be a fusillade of STR 6 Jetbikes trying to pop your Rhinos.

The threat of this one build ties the hands pretty good doesn't it?  The shocking news is, Adepta Sororitas can do it.  Here are 60 STR 8 AP 3+ shots that can help you drop the WraithKnight, in two Combined Arms Detachments.

2 x Combined Arms Detachments of the following:

80pts  Canoness (Infernus Pistol)

135pts 5 Dominion (4 x Meltaguns, Veteran Dominion Superior w/ Combi-Melta, Simulacrum Imperialis)


70pts   Immolator (TL Multi-Melta, HK missile)

135pts 5 Dominion (4 x Meltaguns, Veteran Dominion Superior w/ Combi-Melta, Simulacrum Imperialis)


70pts   Immolator (TL Multi-Melta, HK missile)

135pts 5 Dominion (4 x Meltaguns, Veteran Dominion Superior w/ Combi-Melta, Simulacrum Imperialis)


70pts   Immolator (TL Multi-Melta, HK missile)

90pts   5 Sisters of Battle (Meltagun, Meltagun, Sister Superior w/Combi-Melta)

50pts   Rhino (Hunter Killer Missile)

90pts   5 Sisters of Battle (Meltagun, Meltagun, Sister Superior w/Combi-Melta)

50pts   Rhino (Hunter Killer Missile)

1950 Pts
22 Kill Points
62 models

So if you were wondering if this force could defeat the meanest model out right now, the answer is: probably.  Don't miss.

The second thing you have to be able to do is take out hordes.  Board control units like Canoptek scarabs and ork hordes can quickly catch you in a box and disallow you from doing anything but take the multi charges that will tie you up and whittle you to nothing over the course of the game.  Sisters of Battle like this just aren't going to survive melee well against anything decent.

Well the reality is those Rhinos are going to be the only target at first and if they assault the Rhinos, they are officially in the sights of 60 meltas.  Most Swarms and such will melt and of course most anything will melt come to think of it!  The enemy will rapidly whittle the meltas the following round but any remaining enemies will then be out in the opening for the rest of the meltas and tank shocks.  Of course there are also Bolters, which do all the work in 40K anyways.

So could it be that even a horde would do poorly in the face of certain death weaponry in this quantity?  Would you be interested to see it in a Battle Report?

Such an army as this loses nothing to move everything a maximum distance and snap fire at flyers and sheer volume will work where accuracy will not.  So hording the vehicles around if the enemy has significant air support is not a bad idea.

Adepta Sororitas are always going to be at a disadvantage it seems, but there are answers if you can afford them.  

The lack of Formations for the Adepta Sororitas does hamper their ability to compete.  For example the Space marine codex that just dropped has a web bundle and with it comes a Formation that essentially gives the Space Marines free transports.  Looking at our list, we are paying for TEN transports!  So clearly the latest codex has driven a dagger deep into our power to compete, so time will tell whether or not the scales of justice are balanced again.  Until then, fight the good fight and make them pay for every bloody inch!

31 comments:

  1. Feel no pain on all gargantuan creatures - 81 shots now required.
    5+ invulnerable (or any suitable intervening terrain) 121.5 shots now required - it's pretty ugly.

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    1. You'll have a couple rounds of this so it will still LIKELY be enough. But as you say: no picnic.

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    2. After the first salvo of course you are down a full third of your firepower even before casualties, but I think closing to fire for the sisters is the more difficult aspect - dominions aside you are probably looking at at least two turns of chasing the mobile wraithknights down before being able to engage them - and that means up to three turns of casualties from the entire eldar army. Once the sisters lose their transport they are walking 6" a turn chasing a model moving 12.

      This is where the exorcists differ in their ability to begin firing immediately, albeit for only a meagre half a wound per turn on average.

      The hunter killers of course can fire at range but not without greatly slowing the vehicle they are mounted on, unless the vehicle has been immobilised or has reached it's target. The points spent on hunter killers, dominion upgrades, and the canoness pistols together add up to the value of two additional squads or exorcist tanks.
      A laud hailer may also be worth consideration for the preferred enemy bonus of the battle sisters that would make a small difference, but a worthwhile one if enough squads are bunched around to take advantage of it.


      In practical terms a sisters player will need to decide if attacking the wraithknights, no matter how many meltas they have, will just be feeding units into a meat grinder. Circling the wagons around objectives and dealing with the other half of the eldar army where possible may be more likely to yield a win - space out a little to avoid multi-stomps and let the wraith come to you.

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    3. I disagree in PART. Closing in on the enemy is no problem for THIS force. if the enemy concentrates on the normal Sisters of Battle who haven't fired yet and are farther away, that leaves the Dominion unmolested to do their thing, which seems like a bad policy. the board isnt unlimited inches deep so there is only so far the enemy can retreat. I don't think the Wraith Knights can run far enough to get away from a lions share of the firepower they would face but then again, that's why you play the game. If the Wraith Knights are not trying to STOMP and are staying away: uh...COOL! The majority of their threat doesn't really come from their guns, especially given the rhino-bound enemy its facing. The loss of the Rhinos is not of great consequence as the game progresses. Losing meltas is the only threat. If you plant your "meltas" in the Exorcist, losing a couple of Exorcists is GOING to hamper your chances a great deal and side arcs aren't hard to get to for the Wraithknights. So why not allow the Wraithknight kills to be on less important shells? I think thats the better play. I cant see three Wraithknights failing to nuke your pair of Exocists. That seems almost certain. but without STOMP, the WraithKnights arent't probably going to kill all the melta Sisters with their two shots (or whatever they are armed with)

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    4. >I don't think the Wraith Knights can run far enough to get away from a lions share of the firepower they would face

      In practice it's just risk management for the eldar player, a turn or two moving sideways reduces the chance of an (un)lucky early wraithknight death and will prevent some of the dismounted sisters from contributing for a while, but it's not an automatic move - how the dominions are presented as targets and the disposition of the other 1100 points of eldar units will factor into it.

      In practical terms the first turn is going to go one of three ways (barring sieze the initiative) and I think the sisters need to be ready to take a different approach depending on how it plays out -

      1) Sisters deploy/act first, wraithknights are positioned just outside of the first turn range of some dominions.
      -the dominions represent the bulk of the sisters initial firepower, 38 shots for 6-ish wounds (snapfiring hunter killers at this point would probably be a waste). The remainder of the sisters force can close 18".

      2) Sisters deploy/act second. This is where the wraith would be best served moving sideways in the deployment zone - by focussing fire on the dominions along the same edge first it's entirely possible they could reduce or prevent the first turn of the sisters shooting and buy themselves another whole turn of shooting back.

      3) Eldar player uses infiltrators or similar to block the dominions scout move. Something to keep watch for - scouts cannot advance within 12" of an enemy unit. Something for the sisters to be wary of during deployment, check your opponents list and watch for buildings and LoS blockers in your line of approach - or you could end up with the first turn but no first strike while the eldar player gets the full benefit of a reactive deployment.

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    5. Not entirely accurate. If Sisters go first, all six hunter Killer Missiles will fire from the Dominions at Full bs, as they will first scout and then move 6, disembark 6, 12" range. there's nowhere to hide from the Dominions nor the Hunter killers.

      If Sisters go second, they can null deploy.

      The Triple WraithKnight build isnt going to use scouts. Just a hunch. Lol.

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    6. I assume you mean firing the HK at full BS and snapfiring the multimelta? I think it's a bit marginal for the points but I can definitely see the appeal in getting the largest number of dice into the initial attack.

      With the first turn though there is no guarantee of any given dominion squad making it into range of a wraithknight. It's very easy to measure out 25" from the centre-most squad and place all wraith to the left or right of that spot. The sisters will be immediately down from an 8 squad alpha strike to (at best) 3 even before factoring in infiltrators, terrain, and blockers.


      Null deployment ... I assume you would deploy the remaining sisters huddled against the side of the board where the dominions are most likely to be able to assist when they arrive? You'd average around three dominion squads on the 2nd turn on the 'correct' side, one on the far side, and two delayed.

      I'd be interested to see how an eldar opponent played this one - to keep the force in the 'safe' 24" central band and commit one way or another after reserves enter, or to jump the sisters immediately and look to take no more than one round of shooting from any given squad.

      Statistically the sisters need multiple rounds of shooting so units would have to survive after outflanking... but when it comes down to the dice you never know when you might get lucky.


      >The Triple WraithKnight build isnt going to use scouts. Just a hunch. Lol.
      Some of it will come down to the sisters biggest advantage - relatively few players know enough about them to punish them properly, and even with infiltrators (such as the ever popular scorpions) they may not think to deploy them as a screen. The Eldar player has over 1100 points in support though.

      A greater (albeit less common) threat to dominion alpha strikes are allied inquisitors who will end the dominions advance before it begins for the low price of 34 points. Fortunately not something you should be seeing outside of WAAC tournaments.

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    7. Correction 31" from the central dominion.

      IIRC there is about 48" of distance between a centrally deployed model and the far corners so it's a squeeze, but there is room.

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    8. Your math is still off. You start at 12". You SCOUT 12". On your turn, you move 6", disembark 6" more and fire 12". So the EFFECTIVE range of the Dominionsin turn one: 48". The power of a Dominion strike cannot be over stated.

      Thus any Wraith Knight attempting to avoid it would have to start 49" from me and cover would man nothing to the dominion!

      And by doing it this way ALL guns fire turn one except for the Sisters of Battle inside their Rhinos, who could fire bolters and their Hunter Killers, but not their Meltas.

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    9. Also, youd average FOUR Dominion coming in, not three. Minor correction but major impact.

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    10. To clarify - if you deploy a rhino/immolator dead centre and 12" forwards it will be 50" from the far corners of the board - though you'll gain a few more with immolators either side of the centreline.

      You have a maximum reach of 36" from the deployed spot (forgot the disembark in the original number). Anything your opponent deploys past that distance is beyond the first turn range of both the vehicle in question and every vehicle to the far side of it.

      Don't know where I got 8 in my original post, maximum number of dominions in range would be 2 squads, plus hunter killers.

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    11. the width and depth of the Wraith Knight is to be considered. But sure. If the Wraithknight does this and just leaves his bikes to be slaughtered, then maybe But the WK has a range that makes this an extremely unlikely deployment by the enemy.

      Frankly ill take my chances with a WraithKnight that chooses cowardice and i think it will be so rare that Im not going to have to worry about it in the grand scheme. For if the WraithKnight was to deploy like that it would in effect give up two rounds of shooting if the Sisters play the same game of keep away and the production of the WraithKNight will be almost nothing. it will kill some Rhinos in the long run in turns 3 and 4... By then its turn 5 and objectives are being taken... I dunno. I just dont think it's likely but I suppose in THEORY this could force a Dominion pair to simply pincer deploy and give nowhere but to the center for the Wraith Knigyhts to go? But here again... You're painting what might easily be considered the least likely scenario for him to choose. Who knows. Maybe he will...

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    12. Might I ask why you feel the eldar deployment is unlikely?
      My last opponent did exactly the same thing when placing second - a denied flank deployment.

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    13. The range for Heavy Wraith Cannons is 36". Anything 49" or more is just fine with me. The huge bases mean that if one is 49"+, then two and three are more than that by a fair amount. We end up like two boxers in opposing corners I guess until someone gets bored OR all his bikes go away and he's forced to do more than just shoot. They cant Jink against the Meltas, so the bikes would just go away and the wraiths would get stuck doing all the heavy work themselves, stuck in a corner most of the game unable to get out of the quadrant much. I suppose that works to the advantage of the Dominion, yes? To be fair you weren't employing this army at the time.

      The Strategic Objective that grants infiltrate would be pretty awesome against this setup you propose. Lol. But I digress.

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    14. I would expect the eldar to push out of the corner in their first turn unless the dominions are boxing them in, sweeping up the board. The deployment is just to soften the initial alpha strike.

      How effectively they can sweep out is reliant on the other 1100 points of eldar and what the hunter killers and dominions on that flank (assuming they abandon the wraithknights as a target) can do in terms of wrecking transports, killing bikes, etc.


      I think the sisters would need to press the initial assault unless the other 1100 pts of eldar are notably short ranged (banshees, wraithblades, storm guardians, etc). The dominions won't last more than a couple of turns after which it's 2-3 wraithknight and the eldar stragglers against four rhinos and 20 sisters.

      With heavy enough terrain, good objective cards, and a good showing from the dominions it could certainly get interesting.

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    15. That was my point really is that the Bikes are going to be there as targets if the Wraith Knights are not. Both Eldar units have the same range. Cant hide em all. If allowed to kill 15-18 Bikes to get things kicked off, that sounds like a pretty good first turn to me. There's 500 points gone for the Eldar. Even if they break out all they are doing is lining up for the Sisters of battle coming behind them.

      Now a tactic i have talked about before is using the Rhinos as a firing reticle, which also stops the Wraith Knights from getting in on me and stomping.

      The Triple Wraith Knight possibility is quite real and as an Adepta Sororitas general, i just think it's important to think about that really hard when you're deciding what to do now. The Space Marine Battle Company is yet more reason to consider this approach.

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    16. I don't think 15-18 bikes would be out of the question with that many dominions. 500pts might be a little optimistic (and would suggest that most/all of the dominions had disembarked), but would seem to result in a couple of turns of exchanging fire ending with the 2-3 wraithknights and eldar stragglers vs the 4 battle sister squads scenario I mentioned above.

      I think it's unlikely the exchange would drag on too long given the proximity of the wraithknights, but if the eldar player is over cautious posturing up for a knight charge (or suffers unusually heavy initial casualties) the sisters might be able to drag things out with a fighting retreat that would improve their odds.

      Deployment wise a central position rather than two split groups would increase the amount of firepower you would be able to bring to bear (at the cost of the eldar player having more 'safe' space to work with).

      ------------------------------------------------------

      Throwing melta dominions at a problem is pretty much plan (a) for the sisters. It becomes problematic in the face of infiltrators - battle companies notably have scouts as their first choice cheap aux choice.

      Using infernus razorbacks the marines can match your numbers (10 squads and 10 vehicles) for only 700 points plus weapons and characters. They won't be carrying the same density of melta weapons but they can reroll everything and they have a lot of points in hand

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    17. 18 bikes x 27 points each =487 points! So its not overly optimistic at all. The Warlocks add 50 points per squad so really, facing it the way most people play it in my meta at least, you're looking at yet another 150 points for them. That's 636 points quite possibly. So the Wraith knight cowardice would cost them pretty much all their bikes.

      Now as I mention, at this stage those Wraithknights would most definitely come in and try to blast and stomp me to death. The good news is that if you place the Rhinos like a Reticle, Then the WraithKnights may well NOT be able to charge on their next turn, or only be able to make two of their three charges. I can accept that! The following round, the blizzard of shots into the WraithKNights who are now in range would be quite effective. I'd really like to see this in action. I actually CAN do this Battle Report. There's a guy locally with this setup i just played last night. Ill ask him to maybe be a sport and play it against me.

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    18. 18 bikes x 27 points each =487 points! So its not overly optimistic at all. The Warlocks add 50 points per squad so really, facing it the way most people play it in my meta at least, you're looking at yet another 150 points for them. That's 636 points quite possibly. So the Wraith knight cowardice would cost them pretty much all their bikes.

      Now as I mention, at this stage those Wraithknights would most definitely come in and try to blast and stomp me to death. The good news is that if you place the Rhinos like a Reticle, Then the WraithKnights may well NOT be able to charge on their next turn, or only be able to make two of their three charges. I can accept that! The following round, the blizzard of shots into the WraithKNights who are now in range would be quite effective. I'd really like to see this in action. I actually CAN do this Battle Report. There's a guy locally with this setup i just played last night. Ill ask him to maybe be a sport and play it against me.

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    19. From a mathhammer perspective it adds up, but it does assume no bumps in the road. Tactically speaking it's the bumps you want to plan for.


      Reticle - standing behind the immolators, or between them? Both would seem to cost you quite a bit of your range?


      Make sure your local guy gives you the proper treatment - split the bikers up, screening infiltrators, suncannons, LoS blockers, perhaps a seer council with eldrich storm sat just out of melta range :p I would hope he knows better than I do how to deal with razorbacks and power armour.

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    20. Ill see what he'd like to field but Ill pass those suggestions along so that there will be no mercy for me.

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  2. Nice analysis.

    I'm surprised you didn't add in Exorcists. I would have thought with D6 shots from range and AV13 to be immune to Str6 shots from the Jetbikes from the front would have put them in the list.

    I'm interested to know you thoughts on Exorcists (apart from the ugly church organ model - mine will be converted) ?

    Rathstar

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    1. Bikes get to side armor real quick. theres no saving the exorcists if the Eldar player decides to kill them. Range m,ight save them, but only briefly. The saving grace would be to cloud the enemy vision with Rhinos in their faces but then, you need the points for those Rhinos, so there's that. In the end the Exorcist is unreliable so better in pairs. once you're committing 270 points, it starts to become a question as to whether you do want that kind of egg basket.

      The Exorcist in general against normal opponents, for which it was designed, is good. It can be frighteningly effective and a little bad luck goes a long way if the enemy isn't rolling so hot. I like the Exorcist as the red herring more than as a true offensive weapon. I like it a lot in that role because the enemy will probably expend some resources killing them and those resources as likely as not will cost more than the exorcist so a net gain in that way as your other stuff screams up the gut.

      The Exorcist was a fantastic weapon against the more fundamental armies of 40K. If there were less ridiculum running around perhaps it would shine. But at this time i think they have to let it fire five times, every time, to really enjoy its benefits and make it the terror it deserves to be. And it DESERVES to be the Sisters of Battle "broken thing". That's my opinion. make it Salvo 5 and call it a day.

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  3. Agree, while the exorcist scares other players, it is not truly a huge threat. In threes, they are very scary - but very fragile. Low side armor, and just a single weapon standard issue. You often have to castle them with rhinos to protect the side armor, and I don't like investing 80 points of rhino cover for my exorcists. For the same points, you can upgrade rhinos to immolators with TL MM, or just get more immolators in general. In 7th ed games, I most often will field no heavy choices whatsoever.

    Local tourneys, I run a single sisters CAD and use inquisition as my non-faction ally to preclude the opponent scouts and advance deployments. The added bonus of servo skulls is that my servitor plasma gun shots essentially don't scatter in the early game.

    With a single CAD constraint, other options to consider:
    -four pack command squad to field four multi-meltas along with a hospitalier for FNP
    -Celestians for more multi-melta goodness
    -retrib squad with four heavy bolters and a simulacrum

    Multi-melta offers more range than melta guns (trade-off of less mobility), scare most players playing mech (rightfully so), and offer yet more immediate threats from which the opponent must choose targets. I fully believe in duplication of threats in my army.

    The heavy bolter squad provides 12 shots of rending across 36 inches. Great for light vehicles, scouts not buried in deep cover, termies running out in the open, and light flyers. They also can be used to force bikes to jink, reducing the number of targets I need to handle most immediately with the dominions. Highly underestimated and under utilized, imo.

    Looking forward to your battle report vs a plethora of eldar bikes, they are one of my more challenging opponents to be sure.

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  4. I had meant to do this a while ago but I put theory to the test and tried this basic approach to the list at a tournament. I faced a War Convocation, an Imperial Fist Centurion Star army and a Chaos Daemon Monstrous creature/Castigator abomination.

    I went undefeated. Reports from the front! It's a bit later but i thought I'd drop that off here.

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  5. I'll happily play my triple-Wraithknight against your Sisters any day of the week; you're spending your whole time focusing on three models while the other 1000pts of the Eldar army are still getting to play the game as well. Pretty sure all of those Scatter Bikes, Warp Spiders, Hornets, flyers, etc, etc are all more than capable of shredding units.

    Also, keep in mind that null deploying against a firepower army will not be an option on all boards and game types- an Eldar army is fast enough to bypass many kinds of blocking terrain to shoot at your units, potentially tabling you on the first turn before reserves can arrive. Similarly, many armies make use of allies such as a Skyhammer or other first-turn shenanigans and thus have the potential to seek out your units regardless of where or how they hide. Death From the Skies further complicates things, as do the Geokinesis powers, as the former all but guarantees your army will arrive piecemeal (since you will be needing a 5+ to come in) and the latter lets things shoot at you without regard for LoS.

    Sisters can deploy a lot of firepower when going first, but they have very few solutions to anything that doesn't just deploy on the table and shoot at them normal-style. If the enemy gets first turn (or, god forbid, Seizes) or has an effective null-deploy strategy of their own, they are often without options.

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    1. This was written before the ITC made it 0-1. As for your reply: I'm not sure why you think I'm "focusing only" on the Wraith Knights when I took six units that ignore cover BECAUSE of Jetbikes. I was mostly responding to the specific comments about the Wraith Knight and whether or not it was enough firepower to stop them (specifically). It is. So save your rant. Any blind dumb mute knows that three Wraith Knights is powerful. This was acknowledged already. The question isn't "are they powerful?". The question is: What do you do about it. You should read it in that context.

      People don't come here to read peoples defeatist mentality, nor listen to overconfisent challenges. You are good at Warhammer 40K. We get it. That doesn't change the question being answered here.

      Since then, in ITC formats, you won't see three Wraith Knights, this will now only really be necessary when outside of that framework. So you should take it in context instead of attempting to convince the internet that there is no hope in such a matchup. We are assuming this thought has not daunted the reader and they are actively interested in some kind of solution.

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    2. The only time the ITC allowed three Wraithknights is when they weren't GCs at all and were a totally different threat profile.

      So alright, take my comments in context: how does your army handle going second against an army that can realistically hunt down the one squad you are hiding behind terrain? How does it handle an enemy beta strike? What tools do you have against FMCs, summoning, and deathstars?

      Or, if you're only speaking in the context of Eldar- how likely are you to be in range of Jetbikes? (Keep in mind that Eldar players will typically take an anti-Infiltration/Scout element because of the presence of White Scars Battle Companies.) How do you kill Warp Spiders en masse? Are your strategies reliant on exploiting gaps that are likely to be filled by the various allied contingents and formations that an Eldar player will take?

      It's all well and good to "convince people that there is hope", but doing so falsely is just bad argumentation. If all you're arguing is "SoB have some tools that can be dangerous but not enough to win multi-day tournaments" then you're not really arguing anything at all- we already know that. But if you think that you've stumbled onto some powerful secret, by all means let the rest of us in on it. Dominions and Exorcists being good, however, is not that secret- we already knew that, just as we already knew the limitations of their effectiveness in competitive play. Building a list that just throws a bunch of S8 AP1 down on the table has been the Sisters strategy since... what, 3rd Edition?

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    3. Also, a quick glance at the date on the post shows that it was made more than a month AFTER the 7E book was released, at which time the Wraithknight was indeed a 0-1 choice for any ITC event. NOVA (and I think Adepticon) allowed multiple Wraithknights at that time, as did your own event- as we are both quite aware of- but ITC did not.

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    4. Just because the 7E book was released then does not mean they had banned it then. Also, not everyone reading here goes by the ITC. So I think you're splitting hairs. The point is many people were still playing it as allowed. Nuff said.

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  6. Okay as for the previous post, you asked several seemingly rhetorical questions but I'll attempt to answer.

    Dominion outflank. So they handle going second just fine, it would seem. There are too many mission variables and terrain variables to answer that question more conclusively.

    I have faced a beta strike list with it. Two before I changed the list to a more balanced one. The answer was: I'm in vehicles. All they killed were vehicles. and then they died. The exchange was one for one, but the points were definitely not.

    ANY concentration of flying Monstrous Creatures will prove challenging. It is so clearly true. However, as an interesting aside, those armies have little board presence that i cant kill and so it becomes incumbent on those monsters at some point to alight. That is when you have to take your shot and only if the killing helps you. Here again, too many variables but FMC's are a very big problem and the only answer truly is sheer volume. You simply must rely on the odds. Odds are you CAN take one down with enough shots of enough strength. Will you? Another story. but then this is an extreme army for dealing with an extreme threat. It makes no pretension as being one you ought to completely embrace against the general world (though you can and it ws interesting to try). In fact I wrote clearly these words: "the latest codex has driven a dagger deep into our power to compete, so time will tell whether or not the scales of justice are balanced again." That does not sound very pretentious now does it?

    Summonging is fine. I have faced that. They die like everything else (same army that had the FMC's). Deathstars are in no hurry to see this army. Depends on the deathstar doesnt it? I've recently seen a couple new ones against which I would not want to get too cheeky with, but I have seen none that 60 meltas cant convince to be cautious.

    On to your next comment: we WERE largely talking about Eldar, so I dont know why you'd doubt that, if you read it. If.

    But since you ask, outflanking takes care of the Jetbike range thing. No problem there. I have seen your Drone Net Plus Riptide Wing + Jetbike spam list with Void shield. Impressive set up. It defeated my Militarum Tempstus (no great feat obviously). I suppose had I been outflanking, you would attempt to use Early Warning Overrides on the Rhinos. That would not have protected you from the threat within much. Perhaps we will get the chance to test it someday, but you're as likely to be on to another army as I am when and if that happens so maybe not. But with so many units to take cover away and shoot the bikes dead, LD to roll and so on it might be somewhat more difficult to keep them safe and effective simultaneously. Who knows. Too many variables.

    Convincing pople there is hope is never a waste of time. People like you may not subscribe to the idea that a hopeful mind makes the finest competitor, for he does not know that quitting is an option. What can look hopeless to someone can look to another as having you right where he wants you. I myself have a problem with people looking at a correct answer to the question: "is there hope against the big bad Mothra" (yes there is) and finding fault with a message not to allow people like you to dull their enjoyment of the game. if you even wish to benefit from the blog here's what I would do: figure out what good there was in it and apply it. And anything you don't think was good: don't apply it. But do not bother to come and attack people for giving people answers to difficult questions involving an underpowered codex. Because GIVEN the players are committed to the codex, they are going to need those answers.


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