This my second game with new Iron Warriors list. Slight change used a spaceship with two formations in dreadclaws, dropped one of the decimators and made terminators my BTS. Exchanged the havocs for dreadnoughts

3000 point game.
Warrior (6) 390
Havoc (2)
Supreme Commander (1)
Rhino (4)
Warrior (5) 390
Havoc (2)
Daemon Prince (1)
Dreadclaw (8)
Defiler (4) 250
Defiler (4) 250
Decimator (1) 225
Chosen (4) 155
Rhino (3)
Chosen (4) 145
Rhino (2)
Dreadnought (5) 250
Dreadclaw (5)
Terminator (6) 395, BTS
Devastation Class 150
Hellblade (3) 200
Hellblade (3) 200

The game ended in the third turn with squats winning 2/0, Could not win the initiative for the first two turns although I had a nice set up for the drop landing which put my forces in good position in the center of the table with plenty of support. My defilers and aircraft got picked off mainly because of the AA cover from the squat airships and after lots of shooting with not very much affect my forces got slowly whittled down but after some great rallying at the end of the first and second turn came back fighting. Defilers are far to squishy and break far to easily. I'm going to try them as a horde and maybe they might do something.

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http://brokenuniverse1978.blogspot.co.uk

So I finally got to play with the Squats and used the following list.

1. Berserkers + Berserkers
2. Berserkers + Berserkers
3. Warrior Brotherhood + Rhinos
4. Warrior Brotherhood + Warriors & Rhinos
5. Thunderfire Battery (2)
6. Thunderfire Battery (2)
7. Iron Eagle Squadron
8. Iron Eagle Squadron
9. Guild Outriders (incl 1xGuild Trike)
10. Overload Airship
11. Overload Airship
12. Overload Airship
13. Overload Airship

Well to my surprise all four airships survived the game with only one taking 2pts of damage. 3 of them also dropped all of their bombs as well. However they were lucky as there was not much AT fire directed at them and the AA was surprisingly effective for a change.

I still have a nagging feeling about the cost and shootiness of the Overloads, but this was just game one so no calls for change yet.

Next to give the Colossus a go.

Did you play with them at 225 or at the 250 we were discussing?

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

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

I just played with them at 225pts as I was just using the full 1.3 version and hadn't annotated any changes onto it. I have some intial theory-hammer thoughts on the list, but I can see the clear vulnerability of the Overlords when they face massed fire themselves.

The Squats were lucky, they won the SR roll-off on turns 1 & 2 which was a big help as it allowed an Overload to break the IW BTS which had just teleported into range of the Warriors BTS. This was followed up by a Defiler formation being broken by Warrior Fire.

They were not so lucky in that they failed more than an average number of activations.

The enlarged Warrior formation worked well, especially when the Decimator advanced on them and only killed a Warrior, but at 400pts was not cheap and felt balanced. The IW dice rolls were poor whilst the Squats had the better of things, winning an engagement on a roll of a 3 with no modifiers pretty much says it all.

The Gyrocopters worked as expected and as two of my three fast units were targeted out of the game, but performed the roll they were asked to carrying out long range sniping of small formations and to my surprise getting in range to use their Auto Cannons. I hadn't meant them to get this close, but Tom's pushing resulted in range dropping and also into their eventual loss.

I thnk that I made a mistake with garrisoning the Berserkers to look after the Thunderfires. They should have been mounted up in Rhinos and sent charging forward towards the enemy as a potential threat, but more as a distraction. The Thunderfires will probably be used as easy targets to entise the enemy out in the future rather than main AA defence units.

I put Berserkers in the Rhinos as well. While they didn't get off the front line due to an overly paranoid Dark Eldar player, that seems to be the best deployment for them. Interesting, since I had only deployed them in Tunnelers before. While fun, I like the added flexibility (and affordability) of the Rhinos. I dumped Warriors into Termites and they had a lot more utility with their ranged attacks and larger formation.

If you play again, let me know what you think about 250 for the Overlords - I am torn on the price.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

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

No problem, I want to try some of the other units out first before I come back to the Overloads. I can just see the smile on an IG players face when I place Overlords on the table facing off against his Shadowswords. Or Eldar Fire Prisms. Or Ork Supa-Zzaps.

Yeah, Shadowswords floss their teeth with Overlords. Ugh...

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

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