Northern Invasion 5 thoughts

Well, I had planned this as a list building and critiquing post, however, I am not going to be able to attend the tournament now due to my wife's work commitments. Its a shame that I will have to miss this year, as it would have been nice to try and defend my crown from last year. Oh well, ill have to plan for next year instead.

 So, this is going to form one part of two rapidfire posts about my thought processes for the tournament. First part is the lists I was initially thinking off.

During the last week or so, when it was unclear if I would be going or not, I had looked at a number of lists and the difficulty of getting a good list at 1000 points presented itself. Now, I would usually go straight to my "go to" list of the Hjaltland LI, but recent games have shown just how tough vehicles have become and it has made the Hrossey Yeomanry list look pretty strong these days, maybe stronger than the Hjaltland, but at such a low points level its hard to get all the elements in to form a well rounded list.

I started, as usual with an infantry based list, which ended up looking like this;

HQ:

Creed

Company commander w/bolter

Tempestor prime w/power maul and command rod

Troops:

20x conscripts

2x squads with autocannon and grenade launcher

MT squad w/2x melta guns

Elites:

Commissar

Command squad w/4x plasma

MT command squad w/4x plasma

Ratlings

Fast attack:

None

Heavy support:

Wyvern

Heavy Weapons squad w/autocannon

Flyers:

Valkyrie w/rocket pods

Transport:

Chimera w/heavy bolters

Lots of boots on the ground and a few vehicles and transports. The plan for this was to run the two squads and HWS at the back with creed, along side the Wyvern, to act as the base line, the ratlines would also be somewhere around. The various MT squads would stay off the board and drop in as and when they were needed or at the end to grab objectives. The Valkyrie and chiwould, one of which would have the command squad inside, would move around and take on what threats they could or needed to. Mean while the conscripts and commissar would be the main offensive unit, pushing up the board and hopefully occupying the bulk of the enemy firepower. 

Its not a bad list as far as I can see, it would gain at least 5 command points (battle forged plus creed), possibly more depending upon what formation I chose to shoehorn it in to. There is also a nice mix of weapons, with the MT packing both melta and plasma for a choice of targets. However, they are all fairly short range weapons. Yes, there are 5 autocannon and 3 heavy bolters spread throung the list, but if I come up against a vehicle heavy list it would struggle. I think that there are enough troops to deal with the objectives, and with 3 MT units being able to deep strike on turn 4 to try and take objectives, I think the list would have worked.

However, I though that i would see what an armored list would look like. Now, I took a list a couple of weeks ago, also at 1000 points, and it worked out quite well, so with a few minor tweaks, I settled on this list;

HQ

Pask w/battle cannon, lascannon and heavy bolters

Troops:

MT squad

Elites:

Ratlings

Platoon commander w/bolter

Platoon commander w/bolter

Vets w/3x plasma guns

Vets w/3x melta guns

Fast attack:

None

Heavy support:

Wyvern

Flyer:

Valkyrie

Transport

Chimera w/heavy bolters

Chimera w/heavy bolters

I dropped the commissars as they weren't needed and I dropped the hell hound as it want very effective last game. I also dropped the second leman Russ and switched up pasks tank as I felt that, while a punished was good, it lacked punch. The basics behind this list would be the Wyvern sitting at the back with the rRatlings, while the rest of the force moved up. The vets would all be in the chimeras with a platoon commander each. The Valkyrie would circle overhead. This list would be hard to crack, a t6 11 wound model, 2  t7 10 wound models and 1 t8 12 wound model plus a t7 14 wound flyer. That's an average of t7 and 57 wounds, all with a 3+ save. The down side is that there are no troops and with the event going for objective secured on troops, this could be a problem. In terms of weapons, there's is still a lot of choice, a good amount of anti infantry with the Wyvern and Valkyrie, the chimeras also add some weight. Pask is the only real anti tank though, yes the melta vets can do a lot of damage, but at 12", 6" is even better. The battle cannon can do it at 72" though as can the lascannon. The MT squad is in for last minute objective grabbing, that's all, their running at bare bones just to come in turn 4 and try to hold the objective.

Now, one issue with the first list is that you are likely to always go last, due to there being a minimum of 9 drops and a maximum of 16, but realistically it will be 13 or 14. The second list your likely likely to go first, with a max of 11 drops but a min of 6, although I would be using 7. This means that the MT units in the first list would only have one round of shooting to enjoure rather than two, as with the second list, making survival a lot more likely.

Both lists have their strengths, the first being numbers, a range of firepower, both anti-tank and anti-armour, but lacks mobility. The second list has mobility and anti-armour and anti- infantry but lacks both numbers and volume of fire. 

However as I was pondering these lists, something popped up on my reading list on blogger, a post from the Warhammer 40k blog, about 1000 point lists and gave me a whole new view on things. More in the next post.