- All my lists so far have had at least 3 Deathwing squads (the last list has 4 Deathwing squads). These squads give me very tough scoring units. Their survivability is quite substantial as each squad can take a lot of anti-infantry before going down (in my experience they regularly survive 1000+ points worth of basic guns before going down). So basically they require anti-tank weapons to be removed reliably. At least in the shooting phase.
Close combat they are much more vulnerable as there are a lot of units that can ignore their armour. They aren't slouches and if a few swing back they can generally crush whatever they are assaulting. Still, I've found avoiding close combat against dedicated combat troops to be the best with these squads. - All my lists have 2 Land Raiders (one crusader, one godhammer). These provide a few things for my army. Transport for squads if I need to move them quickly. Protection for squads if the opponent has a lot of plasma. They keep low AP high strength weapons away from my more vital Deathwing squads. They provide lots of fire support for different things. Overall they are very flexible and can do a lot of things that the army may need.
- At least one squad of bikers. For the most part the squad of bikers is a suicide anti-tank unit. They are small and vulnerable and very threatening so they tend to get shot up quickly. But when they outflank beside a tank that tank is pretty much gone. The teleport homers also let me Deathwing Assault more reliably on those times I go first. I'm moving towards one squad rather than two because at 2500 points there is a lot of firepower that can easily take down the bike squads. More than one small unit and it's basically free KPs for my opponent.
- Cheap land speeders. These are like the bikes and meant for suicide anti-tank. They do their job decently but could benefit from twin-linked multi-meltas or dual multi-meltas. I've taken to arming them with typhoon missiles as opposed to heavy flamers. Armed as typhoons they can engage infantry or light vehicles from a distance until a heavier vehicle presents itself. I've found the heavy flamer opens the speeder up to assault or rapid firing bolters which is usually enough to bring it down.
- Some way to take late game objectives. I used to use my scoring attack bikes for this purpose but they tended to die over the course of the game. Now I've gone the route of using a drop podded tactical squad. The squad can grab uncontested objectives or be used to drop on one my opponent controls. If they show up too soon they do a good job of supporting the Deathwing as they advance.
So my final list that I am quite happy with is
Belial - lightning claws
Deathwing Squad 1 - Apothecary, Chainfist, Cyclone Missile Launcher
Deathwing Squad 2 - Heavy Flamer, 1 Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield, 1 pair of lightning claws
Deathwing Squad 3 - Assault Cannon, Chainfist
Deathwing Squad 4 - Assault Cannon, Chainfist, 1 Thudner Hammer & Storm Shield
Tactical Squad - Missile Launcher, Flamer, Powerfist, Drop Pod
Ravenwing Bike Squad - 2 Melta-guns, Attack Bike w/ Multi-Melta
Typhoon Land speeder - Multi-Melta
Typhoon Land speeder - Multi-Melta
Land Raider Crusader
Land Raider
Predator - Lascannon Sponsons, AC Turret
Dreadnought - Twin-linked Lascannons, Heavy Flamer
I'd have liked to have two dreadnoughts but don't have the second dread model. The predator and dread both fill the same role of anti-transport (along with the cyclone terminator squad, land raider and missile half of the tac squad).
The Deathwing squads can go toe-to-toe with most things and will do most of the heavy lifting.
The Ravenwing zoom around and hunt vehicles.
I believe I've done a good job of building in redundancy without too much spammyness.
Hopefully I can get more testing done over the next few weeks before 'Ard Boyz.
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