Yes, whilst the war engines are very good, it's worth bearing in mind this is the Squats main strength, lots of other armies have great units as well as great army wide special rules(ATSKNF, HIT and run, army wide fearless, int.1 etc.)

Not to say some tweaking wouldn't help. More balanced units would help there to be more builds for this list beyond a gun line with some mobile units to grab objectives late on. (With the main variation being ratio of gun line to support)

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Thinking again about overlords, I'm really not sure they're worth 275pts. Does anyone seriously think they're as good as warhounds?

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Probably better comparing to say a baneblade - it's 50pts more for much more firepower, can't be CC'd, faster, has it's own AA, and has the spotter function. Always popped up is a pro and a con imo (as to which depends on the matchup) as it both makes it easy to shoot, but makes it hard to hide from as well.

Titans i think are a funny one, as to me their 'value' depends on the rest of the army, how they synergise, and how well the army can protect them (especially warhounds against things like terminators, which just beast them)

I think overall you can tell when something's undercosted if you look at the list and your first reaction is 'I am SO going to spam the hell out of those...' Admittedly this can at times be due to the other options being overcosted or underwhelming stats wise of course.

Good point, I think the answer to this is probably to test a few overlord spam lists. My gut feeling is they won't be that great as you either lose a lot of mobility or some of the more varied firepower from the big war engines to fit them. Mark and I can pull together 4 overlords between us so we'll have a bash in the next month or so.

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I've tried multiple overlords and not had much success, except one game against dark Eldar.

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Yeah, as an opponent surely you just take out the few mobile units for a draw at worst?

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I've tried the Overlord frenzy list as well in the past. It went okay - (mixed wins/losses). The problem is no cover and no shields. I'd like to see others try it ans see if they get different results.

The fact that all formations (including the war engines) activate on a 2+ shouldn't be underestimated in its impact or when comparing against other non-Squat war engines. The same thing for the stubborn rule. Sure, they may be fearless, but sometimes you want to get out of dodge when your WE breaks. The Squats can't do that so easily.

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It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Not necessarily I can just think of a few 250 pt WE's (Cobras, scorpions, decimator) that are not as good and a few 275 WE that are only better(feral titan, warhound, questor) in different ways.
If less players are thinking 'I don't get that for 250pts!' I think the list is more likely to get approved, especially if we're thinking the warriors need a pts reduction. Better to play safe with experimental lists?

Happy to playtesting though - an extra 25pts will only make a big difference if you spam them.

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Feedback from the 2k Skorcha tournament last weekend.

So, miraculously I came first with the following list:
Bezerkers x 8
Bezerkers x 8
Bikes + SC
Bikes
Thunderfire
Thunderfire
Overlord
Iron Hawks
Colossus

I played against:
• A tau almost all suit list (not a good match up for the tau)
• Necrons
• Air assault and Warhound marines

Overall Thoughts

AA
The perennial Squat debate! Squat AA on a 4x4 board is pretty decent as thunderfires give you more board coverage. You can bunch it together to ward of plinking from thunderhawks and push back fighters. Obviously it helps to not have faced any armies with barrage. What was interesting is the smaller table meant you could push the really vulnerable to AA units a bit closer to objectives while still gaining some protection from the umbrella. Overall, didn’t do anything to change my view that AA needs to be able to move (either 5/10cm on the thunderfires or towed like Siegemasters/Krieg)

Spotter
This came most strongly into play against the Tau. It’s fair to say Andy, my opponent, didn't love spotter. On a 4x4 table it was near impossible for him to hide his BTS from my overlord/Gyros and thus had to take a MW barrage from the colossus. This is, in general an issue with 4x4 though, (I know Alan found a similar thing against Richard’s Gargants). From my perspective this was partly about the tau list I played but also, Tau have to go after the overlords against Squats. He'd never played them before so didn't know to do so and I made a priority of killing his broadsides and tetras (meaning little to take out the overlord).

Necrons and Marines were fine with it. I still like spotter, I think it forces overlords to be more aggressive (and therefore vulnerable), builds synergy into the list more effectively and has a nice level of character. It did get me BTS against the Tau, making a 2-0 into a 3-0 (but did very little in others). It’s also pretty rare to have more than 1 unit which benefits from spotter (as in 3k a Cyclops is almost compulsory). Furthermore, you lose accuracy as you move with the WEs so the barrage does very little.

1+ Rally
This is just a very sensible rule, clear, thematic (Squats were always the highest leadership army in 40k), makes the army play in an interesting way. Also, hardly different from Ork/Nid 1+ assault or Necron/Death Guard 1+ rally.

Stubborn
I think this rule is still confusing. It also really restricts playing style , particularly on a larger board. Also, it makes deploying iron hawks as garrison scouts essentially giving up a 200 point unit, which in turn means a more conservative play style. It’s risky enough to deploy such a unit as garrison without the risk that they’ll almost certainly get wiped out because they can’t get out of assault range when they flee. Overall, I don’t think Squats need this.

Overall
Playing a fairly assault heavy Squat army on a 2k board was a little bit of a vision of how a 3k squat army could play. Slightly better AA cover means a more aggressive play style is viable but small unit sizes etc means it’s certainly not overcooked. My bike cos still got pounded in every game. One further thought is activation count. In an army without any aircraft, but lots of units highly vulnerable to air assault activation count really matters (as you want to be able to move out of aa cover after aircraft have gone). The Squat list does allow decent numbers of activations which helps with this but isn’t so OP that you can throw hundreds of units forward.

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I was the tau player, first of all we have to bear in mind my list was not meant to be any good it was meant to have suits in it. So I can't really say anything about the power of the list or units, I didn't have any particular concerns that anything was severely OP, not on the basis of one game with a suboptimal list. I was disappointed with the result but then I couldn't make any rolls, lost strategy on turns 2 and 3 (1 too?), and then had a senior moment in turn 3 going after the wrong objective. On a better day this game could have been a draw.

It's true I didn't like the spotter rule, but this is mostly because I found it incredibly confusing, especially taken together with the support craft rule. I think between us we managed to confuse ourselves about where units needed to be in order to see/hide from the overlord and colossus! I do also think the spotter range is excessive when you consider the similar Tau rule is a defining feature of that list and is only 30cm. They are a force multiplier, and at these ranges they can spot for extreme range weapons whilst being relatively safe. I don't think this does good things for the play style.

I'm not sure if the board size really makes it any harder to stay out of reach of the colossus, I mean is there anywhere on a 6x4 board where you can avoid a 120cm/180cm indirect barrage when the unit still gets to move?

I did in fact prioritise the overlord and gyros, I just didn't have anything that could kill them. Normally I would expect to have more options but my list is just crap Losing strategy turns 2 and 3 stopped me being able to deal with them, quite simply.

Bear in mind though that these units start on overwatch which prevents you being able to target them at the beginning with anything except long range artillery, particularly overlords with many 75cm AP/AT shots. As soon I was able I did shoot them (IIRC with the overlord this was very early on and think even broke it, but it rallied). After that when the broadsides died I had nothing that could kill it. It does seem a very good unit for its points because:
- it is resilient
- it puts out silly firepower
- it has 75cm range
- it can spot for a 90cm MW barrage
It's all very well it being "so good that it gets targeted by the enemy" but that doesn't stop it being good. If I am shooting several formations at your overlord, that means I am throwing them into your guns and not shooting at other things. Overlords will get targeted yes. So do markerlight units of the enemy knows what they are doing. Your job as a tau player is to make killing them expensive and frustrating; I see no reason why it should be any different for squats.

Stubborn I didn't really mind, again it is a little inelegant and frankly unnecessary but I'm not bothered. As I mentioned on the 1.5 thread, it did feel strange on the thunderfires. On a unit that can't move its a straight buff, normally the big downside of immobile units is they can't escape when assaulted so are automatically destroyed. Same when breaking after supporting an assault. For squats that doesn't happen unless you have the move to CC them, otherwise you need to use another activation to get rid of them. An odd side effect for sure, I would like to see what happens when there are 4 of these formations on the board.

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(I don't think spamming a unit is a good test of it - for a unit like the overlord and thunderfires having loads of them isn't necessarily the best thing about them, it can be just having more points for other stuff, better versions of things than your opponent, etc. Even if thunderfires cost 1 point an army composed entirely of thunderfires can never win a game on objectives.)

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Hi Kyrt,

Just to clarify on the Overlord. It can't start on OW as a war engine and doesn't have scout. They gyros with spotter can if they garrison but only have a 45cm range.

There's been some chat about it going up to 275pts, I'm on the fence about this (is it as good as a warhound? Better shooting due to support craft + spotter, but slower, no shield, not fearless, no 1+ activation, can't easily get into cover). Also, while it does have a lot of shooting (sustaining with one at 15cm is every Squat player's dream) and is pretty tough. Bear in mind it's not fearless so dies pretty easily in assaults, plus is terrible against MW/TK shooting or if caught in crossfire (basically a giant bullseye) and can never be in cover (so is pretty easy to plink and break). By way of example, if your tau list had a spaceship or AX 10s the overlord would've last about 10 seconds (or spend the whole game hiding on the blitz behind the aa umbrella.)

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Yeah like I said, my list is really not representative, normally I would expect to have more tools to deal with things like overlords. Tau might struggle more than others, but normally I would have at least 2 more formations that could target them (e.g. 2 broadsides and hammerheads, or a spaceship). It's the tyranids I'd feel sorry for.

Regarding overwatch, yes it would be the gyros and thunderfires wouldn't it. Even a couple of 3+ shots is a big problem for recons and skyrays (which is what I needed to get close to the overlord with to be able to shoot it). Or falcons for example. I remember running the numbers now - I would have had to expose 2, probably 3 recons and it was unlikely the attached piranhas would be able to fire after suppression.

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Thanks the feedback guys. Squat push from next week.

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I wouldn't worry about poor nids versus the overlord. A normal assault swarm will break it in an assault easily and then the hackdowns + other crap shooting later actually matters since it isn't fearless. One of those units that when all is going well is great but doesn't handle adversity too well due to low movement, 2+ activation and not being fearless. Otoh, I think it still deserves to be 275 because of its incredible firepower.

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