Tactica: Deathwing 5th Edition

[Russell's teapot]

I played my first game with my Cadians in 6ish years last night (Stick with me, I have a point). 1500 points VS "Blue" Space marines. Turn one he podded an AC/DCCW/flamer dread into my backfield. That 165 point unit proceeded to slaughter 550+ points of Bassie, Company commander and platoon. Color me as a dread believer and I am off to buy two pods...

Dreads can be potent. However, I'll bet that he had a lot more to shoot at than the 4 squads of walking Terminators you'll have as DeathWing...

The viability of SM dreads is based on the fact that they aren't the only threat. The enemy will need to focus fire on the dreads that have podded, the land speeders careening up the flanks, a couple of predators/vindicators & some bike squads. All these will hit you turn 1/2. In a DW army, you can take apart the dread with impunity, while the DW trudge slowly forward, or the enemy delay the LR driving at them with a couple of carefully parked chimeras/rhinos.

DP dreads work in SM armies, I'm yet to be convinced they can work to the same effect for DW. If you want a throw away anti-Land Raider/ Leman Russ demolishaer killer, a Dread with MM can work, but I'd rather have a long range dread, or preferably more terminators of a LR for the points...

[m_r_parker]

I have to admit, I've yet to see a Drop-Pod Dread work in a Deathwing force.

It's a nice idea, but I can only see it working with an en-masse DWA strategy (i.e. everything in reserve, Deathwing squads and Drop Pod Dreads only), and even then the reliance on reserve rolls is far too high. If we had a first turn Drop-Pod rule then it might be more viable, but we don't and we have to wait a couple of turns to get it - and by that point there's not too much it can acomplish, as the usefulness comes from the ability to melta a tank at short range before it can tear up the rest of your force.

Now, if during a re-write for 5th Edition we get the new Drop Pod rules and somehow manage to keep DWA (which I don't think will happen), then it might make some very powerful first-turn strikes. However, for the moment I think out Dreds need to be providing long range fire support. If I want to smoke a tank quickly, I'll be looking to the 2nd Company...

[bobafett012]

Wow, is the DW and DA getting so out dated by all the new toys of SW/BA/SM/orks etc etc that we sink to the 5th page on warseer these days

[cowie165]

Whilst it is a shame we slip back so many pages, what more needs to be said?

http://i367.photobucket.com/albums/o...loodAngels.jpg


Sucks. Can't get pics to embed in tactica forums

[bobafett012]

Whilst it is a shame we slip back so many pages, what more needs to be said?

http://i367.photobucket.com/albums/o...loodAngels.jpg


Sucks. Can't get pics to embed in tactica forums

ROFL that is funny, i'll have to post that in the BA tactica LOL

[starlight]

Sucks. Can't get pics to embed in tactica forums

No, because when we allowed it, we ended up with Gigs and Gigs of Crappy Spam and it caused major drags on the Server-Servitors...

So we decided it is better to have faster load times for all, and the ones who want to see the images can choose to...

[aaronaleong]

whilst it is a shame we slip back so many pages, what more needs to be said?

http://i367.photobucket.com/albums/o...loodangels.jpg


sucks. Can't get pics to embed in tactica forums

that is hillarious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ROFL that is funny, i'll have to post that in the BA tactica LOL

Did you post it?

[jwindsor375]

Hey question for you all. I've been reading this Tactica for a long time and finally decided to become a user. I was wondering is the PDF tactica still being worked on? I really liked it and i haven't been able to find a newer version than 2.

[Grunge]

I second the request posted above!

[SultenUlv]

What is this PDF tactica you are talking about? I tried looking for it, but was unable to even find it...

[Killmaimburn]

What is this PDF tactica you are talking about? I tried looking for it, but was unable to even find it...

You mean those things that starlight pushed for , whereby everyone can see in the flick of an eye how to copy pasta fire and forget and generally not have discussions that take more than a few minutes, that took longer to organise than the people put in place spent on them .... that as a mod push only last so long but come up every year or so..to help people who didn't want to read too much, or learn to use the search function to the levels of the 36th chamber? Oh them. Yeah I'll help you

A few secret tips and tricks- if you look in the forum page, there is a paperclip.Click that it lists all the attachments inside a thread.. so you can quickly find " DeathWing Tactica v2 16-11-09.pdf"
Or if you go to the tactica discussion thread.. find the name of the person allocated to administer your sublist.. and then search their username within given sublists sub fora, going back until you find it.. you would come up with this post.Fortunately RT did actually make a physical object to track down, many didn't.
Maybe the mods should make a pdf about how to find the pdfs that they want condensed to prevent discussion about finding stuff.

[Russell's teapot]

I'm busy, calm down dears!

I haven't forgotten about it, but it isn't top of my RL worries at the moment. I'm trying to work out if DW is still even marginally viable using the RT template - I'm starting to have doubts (and if that doesn't work, I'm not sure what will - I may need some more playtesting of other DW varient lists).

[SultenUlv]

A few secret tips and tricks- if you look in the forum page, there is a paperclip.Click that it lists all the attachments inside a thread.. so you can quickly find " DeathWing Tactica v2 16-11-09.pdf"
Or if you go to the tactica discussion thread.. find the name of the person allocated to administer your sublist.. and then search their username within given sublists sub fora, going back until you find it..

Thank you, good sire... I found it. And it was a pretty good read too I have been playing a few games lately, and have been doing very well with my shooty DW list. I am running 3 dreads as support, and all shooty Terminator squads. BUT, I think the reason I have been doing well, is the fact that I am the only DW player in my gaming group, and they just don´t know how to deal with that many terminators... yet. Once they do... I think it will be another case, and the lack of options to a pure DW player is hurting. I have been playing mostly 1500 and 1750 point games.

[bobafett012]

Thank you, good sire... I found it. And it was a pretty good read too I have been playing a few games lately, and have been doing very well with my shooty DW list. I am running 3 dreads as support, and all shooty Terminator squads. BUT, I think the reason I have been doing well, is the fact that I am the only DW player in my gaming group, and they just don´t know how to deal with that many terminators... yet. Once they do... I think it will be another case, and the lack of options to a pure DW player is hurting. I have been playing mostly 1500 and 1750 point games.

well as long as they bring all comers lists or tournament lists then you should be competative as no one packs in lots of plasma any longer. I think its pretty cheap of someone to tailor a list to beat someone else anyways, it shows their lack of skill immensely. Specially against DW, as its surely not impossible to kill a pure DW army considering we have the worst codex of all the marines which was outdated the moment it was released and is far more vanilla than the vanilla marines codex is. However after reading BA, SM, and SW codex's i can't wait to get a new DA codex. Should be plenty of new toys and new rules in there for us, maybe even a respectable belial or new grand master of the DW or a new LR variant....3 twin linked assault cannons with multi melta on top

[Zeroth]

I don't know if I am to much help Russel, but I had something which in my eyes resembled a success on a local tournament not long ago.

Out of 6 games I lost 2, won 3 and 1 was draw.
Which gave me a "shared 5th". But that's sharing it with 4 people and with 12 being in the top 12

If I could be picky I'd say that 2 games came down to last minute luck and could also have resulted in 1 loss being a draw and 1 draw being a win, but hey, that's warhammer

Results http://dl.dropbox.com/u/248653/ww7%20results.pdf My name is Kristoffer Draugsvoll

My list was this

This is pretty much the list I play all the time and it's been unchanged for the last 20-30 games I've played. I keep thinking about having 3 Crusaders instead of 2 and replicate the unit which the Librarian rides with to have 3 assault units.

But there are just "those games" where having those 2 lascannons is invaluable and where having a shooty unit is lovely. I would be sad to loose that assault cannon that's for sure! Besides the difference is not that big when it comes to how they perform in cc, it's mainly wound allocation and not having a LC guy dropping a few I4 attacks.

I intended to write summaries of my games on the tournament, but in the days after I was busy and when I had time I couldn't be arsed, so meh..

[Russell's teapot]

That's a really odd army Zeroth. Not that that's a bad thing, but it doesn't really gel with how I'd see DW big played.

It seems to be a strange mix of assault & shooting where neither is maximised... It doesn't seem to have enough shots (with the lack of assault cannons) for full shooty, but also doesn't seem (to me) to have enough TLCs in assault for maximum damage...

I like your rationalisation for Belail (although I still disagree with you), it's refreshing to have a reason for the THSS combo on him.

I'd love to see a couple of BatReps from you to see how it's played. Do you use it as an 'assault boat' list, or do you try to use the LRs as the main kiling power in the army & the terminators as 'mop-up' units?

On Heavy flamers, I have one in my list, but I find I never use it . If you use it against (say) an eldar unit, they all die & you can't assault, SMs chose to run if you kill 2 (which is generally bad) - the only use seems to be against the IG blob, which while it seems a good justification for the model - 1) I've rarely fought against this, and 2) they have enough guns to stop you getting there most of the time... I think I may use the points to take a 3 x TLC unit + 2 x chainfists to run with a chaplain or belial.

Cheers

[Zeroth]

The heavy flamer is situational, but very cheap. Had a funny moment of flaming a drop-formed boyz squad with it, touching 17 models with the template.

I basically run it as an assault army, but with the Godhammer pattern LR playing a more defensive role.

Wether my LRs play a killy role or simply used as rhinos for terminators depends on the game.

The reason my squads are kitted the way they are, is because of wound allocation. That rule can be a bitch or awesome. Lets make it awesome then! I'm practically immune to rending..

I'll try to jot down some reports from my memory, it's not like the tournament is completely forgotten after all.. And I do play on a regular basis.

[Spaceraider]

So my regular opponent (chaos player) out-terminator'd me today.. *lthough the game ended turn 5 we played the further turns and what looked like a slender draw became a heavy defeat.
Lessons for today:
Assault cannons can miss with all four shots
My lascannon dred should sit with a cyclone, not a heavy flamer squad!
Chaos terminators can bring many power weapons... and their squads can outnumber us.

[Russell's teapot]

Evening all,

Played my first game with DeathWing at 1750 today! My enemy took a strange SM army & I bounced up my 1500pt army & tried out a librarian...

My army:
Belial - TLC
Librarian - TDA
DeathWing squad - 1 x chainfist, 1 x assault cannon
DeathWing squad - 1 x chainfist, 1 x assault cannon
DeathWing squad - 1 x chainfist, 1 x heavy flamer
LRC
LRC
Godhammer

His army (from memory):
Master of the forge - servo harness + 1 x servitor
Dreadnaught - 2 x TLAC
Dreadnaught - 2 x TLAC
Predator - TLAC, 2 x lascannon
Predator - TLAC, 2 x lascannon
Predator - TLAC, 2 x lascannon
Landspeeder x 2 - each with MM & HF
Landspeeder x 2 - each with MM & HF
Land speeder storm - HF
Terminator assault squad - 4 x TH/SS, 1 x TLC
LRC - MM, EA
5 x scouts - 1 x powerfist (in the storm)
5 x scounts - 4 x sniper rifles & telion, camo cloaks

Mission - Kill points
Set up - 12" from the edge of the board

Looking at his army, I was well peeved not to get a take & hold type mission, but kill points will do, as I only have 8!
Initial thoughts - kill Speeders, as they are realistically the only real threat & try to nueter the LRC full of cheesy terminators () by either manouvering or shooting with enough assault cannons to make puppies cry.

My opponent gets 1st turn & sets up the LRC centrally, flanked by predators, storm scouts in the back field (assuming for counter assault), Dreads off on my left hand side (assuming hoping to stay out of the way, as they are kind of irrelevant against LR spam), the Techmarine hides behind the LRC & the scouts are in a building off to the right (which is bolstered - giving them a 2+ cover save!).

I set up on my right, 2 LRC right in the corner next to a building, the Godhammer lurking behind the building. I elect to set up the Librarian & HF squad in one LRC, an assault cannon squad in the other LRC & deepstrike Belail with another assault cannon squad!
The thinking behind belail & his squad deepstriking was to allow my enemy's LRC to go flying at the rest of my army, while belail & a squad go ape in his backline...

Turn 1 his LRC hammers forward 12", speeders zoom around a bit & end up in he middle with their flat out cover saves & 2 of the predators (on the right) use the LRC as cover from the godhammer. His shooting is disasterous for me as he imobilises the librarians LRC with his only glancing shot against a tank in turn 1.

My turn one sees the the librarian get out & leg it next to the Godhammer for embarkation next turn. Belail DS's into a nice space in his 1/2 of the table on the left hand side, between the dreads & the speeders & in front of one predator. The still moving LRC moves 6" forward for some dakka on the opponent's LRC. The Godhammer stays still, but pivots to help out Belail & be able to target either speeder squad.
Belail's squad open up on a pair of speeders, causing no glancing or penetrating hits, so the Godhammer does the same, causing no glancing or pentrating hits... The imobilised LRC shoots at the opponents LRC & immobilises it! LRC's for the win. But the other does nothing. The end of turn 1 & each army had managed the sum total of imobilising an LRC!

In the next turn Belail's squad takes the heat of most of my opponent's shooting phase, as the speeders rightly see his squad as the main threat & I come out of that with Belail on 1 wound & an assault cannon left! Nothing else happens. My turn 2 sees belail & his terminator shooting & failing to hurt a pair of speeders, then assaulting them, drestroying 1 and stopping the other from shooting, the godhammer shoots the other squad of speeders, destroying 1 and stopping the other from shooting (at this point the Godhammer was 20" from the speeders, so an LRC would have been better - I hate Godhammers). My working LRC guns forwad 12" toward his LRC & scouts & pops smoke.

Turn 3 sees Belail pass about 5 invulnerable saves from lascannons, sniper rifles, and the LRC's multi melta, but dies to an assault from the scouts. Turn 4, and my LRC suffers innurmarable glancing hits (yay smoke!), but finally gets a a stunned result, and my opponent had cleverly parked a speeder in front of it - I can't go round it to assault the scouts . His techmarine finally repairs his LRC - uh oh! Only to imobilised imediately again by my imobilised LRC! My terminators in the other LRC get out, shoot the speeder in front of the LRC & do nothing, needing to assault it to destroy it, getting a 5 meaning that they can flukely hide behind the wrekage & meaning his assault terminators will need good rolls to get to them. The Godhammer flys 12" to the left to take on the other lone speeder that had escaped Belail's limp-wristed wrath, the librarian & squad hop out & destroy it in asssault (again after failing to shoot it).

Oppenut's turn 5 sees my LRC blown up by the enemy LRC's MM glancing it, then rolling a 6. His ternimators elect to stay in their LRC and the Techmarine fixes it (again).
Ok, it's my turn 5, this could be it, my opponent has 3 KPs (LR, Belail, Belail's squad), I have 2 (2 x LS squadrons). I can win this! The Godhammer swivels its guns & targets the side armour of a predator, the terminators move to assault the scouts & the librarian cowardly gets back in the Godhammer. The scouts are as good as dead, all I need is for the Godhammer to take out the side armour of a predator with 2 x TLLC & a TLHB - after a fury of rolling, I have the grand total of 0 glancing hits, and 0 penetrating hits (I hate Godhammers). The terminators at least don't fail me & destroy the scouts.

Turn 6 duly is rolled for & got by my opponent, his terminators get out of their RC & assault the terminators that kicked the feth out of his scouts. But the Emperor is with me as his lightning claws hit 3 times, wound 3 times & I save with 3 6's! But I can't repel that many thunder hammers & the squad dies to a limp return of 1 TH/SS terminator. It's now 4-3 to my opponent. The LRC tries to get his LRC again, and fails, the Godhammer, shamed at not killing the predator last turn, swivwels & lines up a dreadnought, blowing it to mars & back. End of turn 6 was 4-4 & no turn 7 for us.

Conclusion:
KP's are dumb! My opponent killed 13 terminators & a Land Raider. I killed 4 speeders, 5 scouts & dreadnought & it was a draw.
Godhammers are rubbish. I keep saying it because it's true. It didn't help that I stayed back to use its range, meaning Belail was unsupported, I should have rushed that area of the board to take some heat off Belail.
I'd rather have a Chaplain - it makes me feel far more confident a playing aggresively. But this wasn't a fair test of the librarian, so I'll try him again...

I should have been more aggresive, but without the Chaplain, and fearful of a squad of TH/SS terminators, I dallied, and it meant Belail died too cheaply. If I'd had Chappers & 3 LRCs I would simply have rushed this army & taken it to pieces in CC (only the TH/SS scared me in combat & the other stuff wouldn't get away in time). But maybe that wouldn't have worked... Given my opponent's wierd & unexpected army & the Godhammer (I hate Godhammers) I was pleased with an expensive draw... Next time, I'll know what to do...

[bobafett012]

not a bad game at all, only thing i would do to your list is toss out 1 LR and add in a 4th squad of terms. I won't write a list without 4 term squads minimum, i prefer 5 and 2 LR's at 2k, but at 1750 you could run 4 with 2 LR's. also, nice try with the DWAing belial and his squad, my only suggestion i have is if your gonna use DWA make sure 2 DS 2 squads relatively near each other, that way you have fire support and a counter charge support. If, and when i utilize DWA i always put 3 squads in reserve and bring 2 in together somewhere, that way you only have 1 squad out in reserve and they usually can come in and provide some nice support wherever you may need it.