Tuesday 24 May 2016

Cadian Battle Group

So this post has been sitting in the draft folder for some time, waiting until I actually get around to posting it. Its been waiting for a while for a couple of reasons; firstly, I'm not overly happy with the army selection I've made and feel that there are probably better ways of achieving the same results, but I haven't had the time to experiment with it and secondly, the longer I've left it, the less relevant it seems to be. The formations came out in Mont'Ka, quite a while ago now. I should have posted up this post as soon as I though about it, but there was lots of other posts flying around at the time and I hadn't had a chance to really look in to the formations.

Now having a a basic look at everything, I'm still not sure about any of them, but we'll take a look and I'll give my thoughts on what I'm seen. Now I've only looked at the very basic formations, using the core elements. There are ways around this, like just using the various formation on there own, but i wanted to look at the actual detachment itself. So here are my thoughts on how I'd run things;

Cadian Battle Group, using the Emperors Shield Infantry Company

Battle group command -
Company command squad - Creed, MoO, Medic, Standard, 2x plasma guns, Carapace (228)

Core -
Emperors Shield Infantry Company -

Company Command Squad - MoO, Medic, Standard, 2x plasma guns, carapace (148)
Infantry Platoon 1 - (410)
PCS - 4x flamers
All squads with fllamer and autocannon
Scout sentinel - multi-laser
Infantry Platoon 1 - (443)
PCS - 4x flamers
2x squads with grenade launcher and flakk missile launchers
3x squads with grenade launcher and missile launchers
Scout sentinel - multi-laser
Infantry Platoon 1 - (450)
PCS - 4x flamers
4x squads with meltaguns and krak grenades
1x squads with meltagun and Sgt with meltabomb
Scout sentinel - multi-laser

This little lot comes to 1679 points, leaving 321. Now I filled out the rest with a Auxiliary Militarium Tempestus Platoon, just to add some proper offensive fire-power. However, with all the option of the IG platoons structure open to you, there are a lot of other ways to add in extra forces. One thing to note with all of this, the FaQ's that were out recently have changed the grenades in assault options, and so Krak grenades on troops doesn't make as much sense any more, so I would probably drop the grenades and arm the the Sgts with melta bombs. This will only save 20pts but would be a little more useful I think. The other option is dropping the Flakk missiles from the squads and putting in a proper Flakk HWT. Doing this along side two Lascannon HWT would take you up to 1969pts. I am assuming that your playing at 2000pts same as what I generally play at, obviously if you playing at 1500, then things are a lot tighter and generally your not gonna be able to bring much in the way of upgrades.

As things stand, I don't really think that the list above is very good. There is no mobility and not a great selection of options, yes, there is a lot is shooting, and I mean a lot! most of it is S3 Ap- and useless against any armour. The autocannons help, but then 8 other blokes are sitting around useless, granted the split fire order will be very useful here. All in all I wouldn't take this list to a tournament or even a serious friendly match, its to cumbersome and really the only strength is just tar pitting everything and over running the enemy with sheer numbers.

Lets look at the other option, using the Emperors Fist Armoured Company

Battle group command - (130)
Company command squad - MoO, Vox, 3x plasma guns, (130)

Emperors Fist - (965)
Command - Pask, 2x Punisher w/Bolter sponsons, heavy bolter hull mount
Squadron 1 - LRBT, heavy flamer sponsons, heavy flamer hull mount
Squadron 2 - Demolisher, Multimelta sponsons, heavy bolter hull mount
Squadron 3 - Vanquisher, Multimelta sponsons, Lascannon hull mount
Engineer, 2x servitors

Auxiliary - (900)
Emperors Blade Assault company
Company command - Chimera, MoO, Standard, Vox, 2x flamers
Vet 1 - Chimera, Demolitions, Grenadiers, vox, heavy flamer, 2x meltaguns
Vet 2 - Chimera, Demolitions, Grenadiers, vox, heavy flamer, 2x meltaguns
Vet 3 - Chimera, Grenadiers, vox, 3x plasma guns
Hellhound - Heavy bolter hull mount

So, I think this is a better list than the infantry based list, although there are some issues. Again, the FaQ throws up some issues, mainly Demolitions on the vets, as each has a melta bomb, which made sense under the old way, but now its just an expensive one shot demo charge. Your almost better off putting a power fist on the Sgt, at least he'll be able to use it in any combat, not just against vehicles and monstrous creatures. The other main issue that i see is that there are not many models on the board, having just 42 S3 models is not really a good idea from my experience. 5 Av13 and 5 Av12 isn't bad, but they can still all be one shotted.

I think overall thought, this is a better build. There is plenty of mobility and firepower, with both anti-armour and anti-infantry with the capacity to take down hard targets like TDA with the plasma and demolished. However it is still fragile, as mentioned,even Av13  can be one shotted and looking a tank is loosing a large chunk of your army.

Either way I think these are the two best ways to run the Cadian Battle Group and neither would be my choice, mostly as your always lacking something, be it mobility, firepower, endurance or simply numbers. Of the two I would  run the second list, its just unfortunate that the only one I can run is the first one!

We'll have to see what the next IG/AM/MT codex brings, but I will probably have to adjust my armies in some way or another, especially if this is an indication of how things will go.


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