OK so the old thread is long out of date and so big it seems unlikely any new people will be inclined to read it. Heres a new Thread for Deathwing tactics for Mechanised, all infantry, even combined arms (Speaking of which I saw a "Siege" DW list recently with all deepstriking terminators, 2 siege dreadnoughts and 3 Vindicators!)
Use this thread for our community discussion (And cool dice)
This tactica is huge! Here are some highlights to help skip some of it!
(If you want something added as a link here PM me)
And this post has good summary of the new wound allocation rules and how to optimise with deathwing.
Starting here is a section on Land Raider Tactics.
New for me a painting thread!
Heavy Weapon discussion starts here.
Trying to start a series of Tacticas based on different opponents:
The Deathwing Versus Horde Armies.
The Deathwing Versus MEQs. and more MEQ help here.
The Deathwing Versus Mechanised and Tank Heavy Armies.
Epic post by Russell's Teapot.
Up to date post on opponents by Russell's Teapot
I'll start with a quick overview of the pure DW forces available and we can go from there.
HQ
Belial
OK, so we know he's not all that, he has no real special rules beyond allowing a Deathwing List and no special weapons or armour... BUT he's very cheap and has the wargear we'd likely give a Master were we to make our own.
What weapons you chose for him will depend mostly on your list, its usually considered the worst option overall but you can't go far wrong with the SB/PS. The sword is master crafted so makes up for the lowered assault effectivness and he has a storm bolter and in Deathwing every shot counts.
Chaplains
Now for Deathwing we can only use the more expensive Interrogator Chaplain. Wargear is limited to a choice of combi weapons only. Being as theres not much choice theres not much to say though if you're getting a chaplian you will likely be getting a Crusader and an assault terminator squad. Since you'll rarely be more than 12" away from the enemy after disembarking theres no reason not to get the combi-weapon, plasma being the best choice. You still get 2 bolter shots but have the option for the plasma when you need it. In general if you aren't buying a Crusader and a load of Lightning Claws then don't get a chaplain, spend the points on a dreadnought instead.
Librarians
Had I been writing this just a week ago I'd have said not to ever bother since they are expensive models considering how truely attrocious our psychic powers are.
However Owen Rees has shown me the light(A little) and I find they do have some uses. Like Chaplians they have only options for a combi weapon; and, like chaplains, I suggest you buy one! For their low cost the 2 plasma shots is well worth it. Now our powers are still very poor (Compare them to the BA ones which are also "5th edition ready" to see how bad they are) but it turns out the librarian has his uses. He does have a Psychic Hood which against some armies (Eldar especially) is invaluable, now our Librarians have only Ld9 so the chances of stopping a power are small but you do get to try every single time so it'll work a few times at least. He also has a Force Weapon which can be useful in some situations. I doubt it will make up for the re-rolls from the Chaplian you could have chosen instead but its a good thing to have around. About our powers then: Hellfire can be used but its random nature means theres never a reason to want to use it. If you happen to be in template range of a lot of enemy troops then of course try it out, its likely better than 2 bolter shots. But you're never going to take any actions to ensure a good hellfire shot because its so unreliable.
Force Barrier is a slightly better power. At first I dismissed it because it only works once per turn, making it a little pointless since you rarely get hit only once. However you can use it with the new 5th edition wound allocation to take hits from plasma or similar weapons rather than have to rely on a 5+ inulnerable. Used this way the librarian becomes a sort of Pseudo-medic and combined with a terminator apothecary you can be confident of your expensive squad taking few casualties while out in the open. The Force Barrier also works in Assault where the Narthecium does not.
Elites
Deathwing Squads
Just remember they are still available as elites! In case you need more than 6 Squads...
Dreadnoughts
Wether you preffer walking gun platforms; running, assaulting, DCCW wielding, combat walkers or some mix dreadnoughts are both cool looking and really useful. Slightly more survivable in 5th ed (Mine seemed to always die to Str 6 weapons) and now able to run they got a small boost. Theres nothing wrong at all with the basic AC/DCCW dread and alot of people use that configuration, the other common ones are the ones in the plastic box Twin Linked Las Cannon and Missile Launcher. Basically the dreadnought can be used as a balancer for the rest of your force, you needed a crusader instead of a regular Land Raider? Then take a TLLC/ML dread to give you more anti tank!
Monolith? DCCW: No problem!
Horde armies? Assault cannon and heavy flamer then tie up huge units in assault.
Basically if you have changable arms or many dreads then buy your dred last and use it to boost any areas your list lacks.
The other options, besides weapons, for a dread are only extra armour or to make it venerable. Both are good options and are usually determined by the model you have rather than anything else so feel free to use or not to taste.
One final thing to mention about dreads: BE CAREFUL IF YOU PLAY MECHANISED! With there being very little cover that blocks LoS in 5th ed your dread is vulnerable. If you have a big mix of units on the board its not so bad, but if all you set up is three land raiders and 2 dreadnoughts then you'll get every str 6-7 weapon in the enemy army fireing at your dreads since they cant hurt anything else. That can be a lot of shots and you'll likely at least lose shooting turns if nothing else.
Mortis Dreadnoughts (IA vol2)
Our specialty Dark Angel support Dreadnought. Basically if you have a need for a firepower Dreadnought consider the mortis instead of a Missile launcher left arm you can have a different heavy weapon. Everything said about dreadnoughts aplies here too. The 2x TLLC is an awesome tankbuster and well worth the points if you have no land raiders, if you do have them, it becomes less attractive unless you're facing some kind of armoured company list. My favourite are the Heavy Bolters (One game with 2 prometheus land raiders and a 2x TLHB Mortis had me convinced) for 6 heavy bolter shots. Some argue that the basic 4 assault cannon/2 storm bolter is almost as good but they haven't seen it in action! The re-rolls on misses mean you usually get 5 kills of any horde troop. The varient I use most though is the missile launcher version. Yes, it looks like a walking ghetto blaster but 2 Str 8 shots/turn is good anti tank and much cheaper than any other option.
Siege Dreadnought (IA Apocalypse or Update 2006)
Its for sieges or cityfight but Inferno Cannon are always cool. I have one and occasionally break it out for facing orks or 'nids. Again not much to say here, chances are if you paid the FW money for one you'll like flamers!
Troops
Deathwing Squads
Our terminators cost more than regular terminators and aren't quite as good but thats never stopped us before!
The first thing to say about Deathwing squads is that they can mix and match heavy and assault weapons. Note they CAN mix & match you don't have to! In a standard DA force its a huge bonus to have a unit that has a decent shooting ability (Maybe 2SBs and a heavy) while retaining 2 Lightning Claw terminators. In deathwing its usually seen as a better idea to focus your squads roles towards assault or support. This does not make mix & match useless...far from it! But it is worth saying that 1 dedicated shooting squad and 1 dedicated assault squad will work better than 2 mixed units. However your support squads will get into assault and your assault squads will be out of combat at times so some cross over is viable. Often adding a heavy weapon to a Lightning Claw squad is all you need, for reasons of wound allocation (See below) its possibly advantageous to have a single LC terminator in a support squad too.
For assault squads you want to maximise your Lightning Claws. they are your workhorses and will do the most damage however every squad should have at least 1 Power Fist type weapon, be it a thunder hammer, chain fist or an actual power fist. Since you do need this its been good practice to give an assault squad one heavy weapon and upgrade that heavy weapon to have a chain fist too. I think this is our best offensive combo for close combat terminators. Really you should try to avoid TH&SS. Even with the new wound allocation rules that let you actually use the storm shield, the TH isn't much better than a power fist and a better combo for the squad would be Storm Bolter and Chain Fist.
Support "Shooty" squads ideally want 4 Storm Bolters and a heavy. However these squads are going to get shot and the best way defensively to arm your squad is to have 5 models with different weapons. This lets you minimise losses by putting all the AP 2 wounds from each squads fireing on to one model. We'll start having a Sgt (SB/PS) and a heavy weapon leaving 3 identical models. The first thing to do is to buy a chain fist for one model. This is good anyway since CFs are excelent and only 5 points this leaves 2 identical models and there are 2 options here: We can buy a second Chain Fist (We could leave 2 power fists but that sets up the chain fist to be cannon fodder for the power fists so 2 CF/1PF is better) or have a lightning claw terminator. He'll likely die first and you'll only miss out on 1 SB shot anyway but some like to maximise all firepower (Every shot does count!) But also you should eventually get into assault (Terminators are far too costly to use as missile troops only!) so maybe that Lightning Claws terminator will be useful afterall? Some do consider this to ba a little "Gamey" since you're basically outfitting your squad to take advantage of a game rule rather than for the weapons themselves... others think its a bit sad to think about it this much and stick with 3 SB/PF terminators.
Pure Deathwing has no Fast Attack choices.
Heavy Support
Land Raiders
This is where I made my name (Such as it is
In DW you should be transporting terminators. Assault terminators in a land raider will disrupt your opponent like nothing else. Even support squads can benefit from this quick forward deployment.
Buy extra armour! If you do nothing else in this tactica remember that!
The standard pattern land raider is often forgotten about in discussions about effectivness and value with its more popular crusader brother and the exotic FW kits. Seen as a jack of all trades, master of none: Does it want to be antiitank pillbox? Troop carrier? Bloke murdering behemoth? LoS blocker? Yes it can do all these but I think its worth remembering the whole quote of that old addage:
"Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one"
The Land raider can do any and all of these roles and usually can do them all at once with reasonable efficiency. In deathwing they really shine to deply a unit on turn 2 and after that be available for fire support and other duties while only losing 1 turn of fireing.
Have no doubt: the Crusader is the best. People have other favourites but thats personal prefference, undoubtedly the crusader land raider is the best we have for on table performance and is always the first one I go for. In mechanised DW one crusader is necessary since our HQs have to go somewhere! The increased capacity of the crusader is very welcome for us. They ideally could be split between 2 squads in 2 crusaders but most players go for 1 crusader with 2 HQs and a squad.
Unrivalled close support firepower is only the start of the crusaders goodness as the hurricane bolters are defensive it can fire all weapons at 6" move.
The frag assault launchers are always welcome too, since terminators cannot have grenades of their own this can be a real life saver for lightning claw squads.
Forge World has given us 2 other land raider variants. One, the helios (IAvol2) cannot carry terminators (Well, I suppose you could put your HQs in there!) and is basically an over priced Whirlwind. Since the WW is indirect ire the idea of having it behind something for protection made it a great choice. Having an AV14 all round Whirlwind with superfluous lascannons is less than optimal to say the least.
The Prometheus land raider (IAvol2) is however an awesome boon for a deathwing army. Now RAW we can't use them since they can only be used as a transport for a command squad (Which Deathwing can't have) but its been clarified by Forge World that Deathwing should be able to use these and they can be heavy support. (If your opponent is a jerk and questions your right to use your £120 model you can print out the Email from the B&C Forum to show him.)
Though it retains regular Land Raider capacity, the prometheus has 12 twin linked heavy bolter shots. Its a huge ammount of firepower and, unlike the crusader, the prometheus can do this up to 36" away!
The prometheus also comes with improved comms, letting you re-roll a reserves roll. Useful if you are Deepstriking more than one unit I suppose but slightly under used now we have DWA.
The prometheus (Or two) have been used in a particular type of mechanised list where for most of the game the terminators never leave the land raiders. After picking off the enemy anti tank with LR Lascannon the three Land Raiders sit back and shoot the oncomming troops with impunity since most armies have few weapons that can kill a land raider its easy to remove those threats. It has to be said this can get really boring quite quickly and its not unreasonable to drop kick someone doing this alot in their face.
I haven't said everything here but I hope this will give us a foundation for a new thread which is up to date and not 150 pages long!
This has been a brief overview of available troops, what I'd like to see is more discussion on tactcs to use in game and tips and tricks for playing as well as army list development as we play more and more with 5th edition.
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Originally Posted by gideon0330
