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 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.
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.