Friday 2 June 2023

League / Tournament list review

 This could be quite a long post as I’m going to go through all the units in the army and talk about how they faired in the tournament and what i learnt about them. I’m not going to go through every single unit individually as going over the same thing for 4 infantry squads would be a little pointless, as i would be writing the same thing over and over again. 

Firstly i want to put a little note about the main rules. These were a little confi=using and i think i got several of them wrong on several occasions. The min thing was that were were only using the Arcs of Omen detachment and not the rest of the rules. This mean that i should have been paying CP to reserve my flyer and not reserving it for nothing as per the AoO rules. Secondly, AoO only give 6CP for detachment building but we were using the full 12 and getting the 1CP at the start of every turn, meaning a total of 22CP available rather than the 16CP from the pure AoO rules. It was all a bit confusing and I’m still not sure i got it right.

As for the actual units, well, there were some winners and some losers and there are a number of changes that i would make to the list if i was to run it again.

Within the HQ section there are a couple of changes to be made. The primary Platoon Command Squad would drop the relic the Finial of the Nemrodesh 1st as this did very little during the whole 5 games. I think i would take the Barbicans Key, but probably on the Militarum Command Squad. I would also change the war gear options for the bullgryn. I would replace the ripper gun with the Maul, as he spent most of his time in combat than shooting and would have done significantly more damage had he had it. The extra points would be recovered from the Priests war gear.

The second Platoon Command Squad And Primaris Psyker would be left as they are. Both these units did what was required of them. The command squad was expendable yet packed quite a short range punch. I had wondered about replacing one of the weapons with a plasma gun it I think it would not have worked as well overall. The psyker worked very well and the two defensive powers did what I wanted and there was only two occasions I can think of where other powers would have been useful but smite did the job anyway. 

The Troops section will not see many changes. The three Cadian Shock Troops would remain as they were, one change that could be made is switching the flamers for plasma guns but I’m not convinced it would gave made much difference. The Infantry Squad’s all worked as i hoped and so would not receive any changes. Both the Cadian squads and infantry squads worked, with the mortar squads doing a very good job holding my home objectives in all the games bar the Knights game, but that was a disaster from the start, so we'll ignore it! The final troop option was the Death Korps of Krieg. Now while i had some success with these, i really don’t think they were worth the extra 20 points over their counter parts. I would replace these with another Cadian squad armed the same as the other 3. The extra 20 points would go towards upgrades on other units.

There are a couple of changes to be made in the Elites section. The Commissar’s would remain the same, I would have liked to out power fists on them but that is unfortunately no longer an option. The Regimental Enginseer would also remain as he did a sterling job keeping the Hellhammer alive in several games. The Regimental Preacher's on the other hand will see some minor changes with both being armed the same with autogun and pistol with chainsword. The maul was useful a couple of times but dropping it pays for the maul on the bullgryn, which would have been far more useful, as the preachers are there mostly to buff the other units. I think all these units earned their place in this list without a doubt, i could probably drop a preacher but i think having two worked very well. 

The Valkyrie would also remain the same but will definitely start every game off the table, as it did much better that way. The Lord of War would see a minor change to it. While the Hellhammer did well in most games and certainly earned back its points most of the time, i think having Knight of Piety on it was a waste of points. I didn’t need the 5++ as i could get that from the Techpriest and i took very little damage from mortal wounds, in fact I’m not sure i actually took any in these games. For 35 points it was expensive for the return i got. I would most likely replace this with either Master of Camouflage or, more likely, Veteran Commander with the Heirloom Weapons doctrine for the 16” flamers, although Industrial Efficiency would also work quite well.  

The Militarum Tempestus Detachment would remain mostly unchanged, with just the Militarum Tempestus Command Squad gaining the Barbican's Key relic. The Tempestus Scions would remain the same, although I would try and remember that I'd armed the tempestors with plasma pistols and not HS laspistols!

Overall with these changes I would have 25 points to spend and I'm not sure quite where I'd spend them. One possibility would be to split the second Scion squad in to two squads of 6 men with a melta and grenade in each and drop them in the Valkyrie but I liked the twin melta unit as it gives some redundancy. Another option would be to swap the DKoK squad for another Scion squad and not a Cadian squad. Tool this one up with flamers and grenade launchers and put this in the Valkyrie, although I would only have enough points for an 8 man unit with just two special weapons. Dropping the door heavy bolters on the Valkyrie would make up the points and I forgot I had these most of the time anyway! This would enable me to drop in the squad using the grav-cute insertion rule to get up close and personal with their weapons. 

Overall I think the base list worked very well but with a few little tweaks here and there I think it could do better. I really did miss the bullgryn maul in melee, that extra strength and damage would have gone a long way and this was probably my biggest mistake in the list. I do wonder what this list will look like in 10th? We will hopefully be running a similar league / tournament in 10th, which i am looking forward to. Over all my biggest take away from this whole thing is that I remembered just how much I enjoy playing games. 



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