Playtest 1 of the new version Emperor’s Children 4.0 (experimental)

Lists:

Codex Space Marines, 3000 points (NetEA 2012 Tournament Pack):
1. Tactical, Supreme commander, hunters, rhinos (BTS)
2. Terminators, Chaplain
3. Vindicators
4. Tactical, dreadnought
5. Thunderhawk
6. Devastators, rhino
7. Bikes, Chaplain
8. Thunderbolts
9. Thunderbolts
10. Thunderbolts

Emperor’s Children 4.0x, 2995 points:
1. Retinue, Warlord, Rhinos, Stalker 365 pts.
2. Retinue, 2 noise marine (replacements), rhinos, stalker, 340 pts
3. Retinue, 4 noise marine (replacements), rhinos, stalker, 365 pts
4. Armored company, 8 EC predators, 400 pts
5. Hell knights (6) 450
6. Questar 300
7. Questar 300
8. Chaos Thunderhawk 200
9. Retinue, dreadnought, icon bearer 300

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

TURN 1
Beginning of game:
The EC:

The Subjugators ready for action

SM off-board stuff:


Strategy: EC
Retinue doubles and lays a BM on the scouts, who burn their overwatch and return the BM favor:


Vindicators double and take out a noise marine:


Another retinue doubles and lays a BM on the scouts:


Devastators double and lay another BM (seeing a theme here…):




Predators double and lay a BM on the devs:


The BTS doubles and lays a BM on the preds:




Questar 1 scoffs at the dangerous terrain, doubles and unloads on the speeders. Fancy rolling means only one dies:


The land speeders zip away (probably flipping the scout titan the bird on the way out of Dodge) and put some MW hurt on the retinue, ZoC-ing almost everyone in the process:


Questar 2 doubles and reaches out to the BTS to say hello, taking out a rhino


On a retain, the EC send in snowflake the fearless T-hawk in a mind-blowingly heretical CSM air assault:


Almost all the good guys (except for the SC and a SM) live, the Subjugators win the resolution and all but the dreadnought and icon bearer are hacked down. Snowflake sits there, looking embarrassed.


T-bolts strafe the retinue, laying a BM:


EC supreme commander marches:


T-bolts strafe the hell-knights, laying a BM:


Hell knights double, lay a BM on the vindicators:


Third T-bolt FM strafes another retinue, laying yet another lonely BM.


The goody-two-shoes mirror image of my air assault retinue assaults the preds:


An improbable loss. The tactical retreats to the hill.


The bikes double and lay some BM-hurt on the Hell knights from behind. Being Slaanesh, they merely say “thank you, sir. May I have another?”


Broken snowflake and the T-bolts escape with various numbers of BMs but intact:








End of Turn 1. Hmmm I wonder where all the action will be in turn 2?

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

TURN 2
Terminators teleport in with one BM
Strategy: SM.


Bikes assault the middle retinue:



The bikes win, only one noise marine unit survives


Terminators assault the preds on a retain.


It is a bloody combat. The SM chaplain dies from a lone rhino FF attack. It wasn’t my chaplain, so I can say that was priceless The remaining stand of termies is still victorious. A solitary pred escapes the game of “let’s play hacky sack with tanks”



The Hell knights advance, and kill 3 vindicators with shooting


On a retain, a Questar engages the scouts:


He is victorious, but loses all but one DC due to support fire from the BTS and land speeders (which crit him for good measure)


Devastators sustain and lay a BM


Land Speeders sustain and kill some stuff


The retinue marshals


The BTS advances, and takes out a Hell Knight DC on a crossfire. Dave’s a jerk.


Air assault remnant doubles and lays a BM on the devs:


Snowflake continues to look stupid. Fails to activate


T-bolts strafe the hell knights, taking one out:


The other Questar advances, takes out a rhino in the BTS:


Another strafing run, another BM


The Warlord doubles back closer to the action, and breaks the bikes with a BM:




Tactical marshals:


End of Turn 2:

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

TURN 3
Strategy: Emperor’s Children

Damaged Questar advances and takes out all but one landspeeder




Termies fail to activate, break, and retreat into some woods. Not a good day to be a terminator




Retinue engages the devastators:


And emerges victorious.


Vindicator advances and takes out a knight:


Snowflake strafes the tactical and lays a BM


T-bolts stay home. Scared of the stalkers, no doubt.


Questar advances and I think kills some bikes out of frame:


T-bolts strafe the knights again:


Rather than doing something useful, the knights marshal, moving closer to the T&H objective:


T-bolts strafe the last predator:


Here’s where he used to be:


The icon bearer’s retinue advances and lays a BM on the BTS


The warlord’s retinue doubles and lays a BM on the air assault tactical…


…which marshals, negating all that hard work


End of Turn 3:

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

TURN 4

Strategy: SM
The BTS engages the icon bearer’s retinue


And wins


On a retain, the air assault tactical engages the lone noise marine to clean him out of the Blitz:


They are victorious, but aren’t able to kill the feisty noise marine


The damaged Questar advances, and takes out a BTS SM unit


The land speeder tries to activate, fails, and is broken for its trouble. It retreats to the pile o’ dead:


Knights marshal. What was I thinking?!? Secure the T&H and try and kill the vindicator, I guess. Of course I whiff on the shot so the vindy is free to cause trouble later on.


Another strafing run:


Snowflake activates for a strafing run and puts some hurt on the air assault tactical, killing two units:


The warlord engages the tactical


Emerges victorious


Another strafing run on the other surviving retinue:


Which marshals. All the cool kids were doing it.


A final strafing run fails to kill the noise marine:


The untouched Questar advances to get T&H


Vindicator doubles, denying TSNP and DTF, making the Questar’s effort moot. Did I mention that Dave’s a jerk?


The stalkers take their toll on the 8th Air Force on their way out, Snowflake escapes with a BM




End of Game:



Results: 1-0 Emperor’s Children, so it went to points. It ended with a roughly 800-point victory for the children.

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

(First) Impressions:

I took all the fancy stuff I could cram into the list. As you can see, there were lots of noise marines, EC preds, and Slaanesh WE’s/knights. This also meant that I had no aircraft or daemons. The stalkers are a good AA option, but easily suppressed (if you’re not careful) and their range makes them a bit easier to avoid. They mostly just put BMs on the t-bolts until turn 4 when they actually shot something down. No complaints there.

The disrupt on the preds and the noise marines didn’t seem to be all-powerful.

Hell Knights were both resilient and powerful. These should perhaps be tested in/moved to the WE section (still at 0-1 FMs).

The Scout titans seemed almost OTT with how fast they are and how much firepower they had. I was bee-bopping and scattin’ all over the place with them. 8 Shots is definitely more than enough for a scout titan FM. My impression is that they should stay at 1/FM.

On the fearless T-hawk: I put a retinue with dreadnought and icon bearer (mainly due to extra points) in this one and sent it against Dave’s BTS. Even with prepping the assault by laying BMs and avoiding support fire, I lost the assault (assassinating his SC in the process). I did not lose the T-hawk, so the difference was that the hackdowns went on the transported FM. The result was a fairly useless FM of one CSM+icon bearer and a dreadnought. The T-hawk left to come back later as a bomber. So, I don’t see this combo as world-beating. Other load outs definitely still need to be tested IMO. If the air assault works, you have the same result as with the codex SM. If the assault fails, more hackdowns go on the transported FM and the T-hawk likely survives to do ground attacks in later turns. Testing will reveal if this is overpowered or not.

Dave’s dice were not his friend that night. If he had rolled a bit more average the results may have been different. Maybe the assault on his BTS would have resulted in a victory for the EC (7 saves on 9 hits, grrrr), but the termies would have saved more and perhaps been effective for a second turn, as an example.

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

Here's what I used:

http://traitor-legion.appspot.com/choos ... 49~549~549

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Dave

Blog

NetEA Tournament Pack Website

Squats 2019-10-17

Oops, forgot the scouts

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

Very good report, fancy pics, clearly understood the tactical flow of the battle. It was enjoyable to read that.
Gladdens to see Emperor's Children in action. Nicely painted, although Snowflake needs some dry brush here and there. (no surprise they lost a prep assault!)

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Epic Commander of the Prassium Invasion Troops 214th Regiment
***Action is our prayer. Victory is our offering.***

Good looking report, thanks guys.

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Just call me Steve.

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My god, Dave's dice performed only average?

....or - shockingly - below average??

The horror....

The horror...

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That's not a moon....it's a space station....

great report and beautiful painted armies!

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I am very unsure about the "Fearless" THawk.
The 'normal' THawk is well understood and tested in the Marines for decades and considered balanced. Fearless adds nothing except to skew the results against the Chaos player. In this case two of the retinue would have survived as the Hack-down BMs could be placed on the THawk. which in turn may have proved more advantageous later on once the formation rallied.

Thanks for the report. I'll admit that I'm disappointed with the loss of Defilers from the list and also surprised as to the knights. Time will tell as to just how good they are.

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I enjoyed reading this report and the plethora of pictures really helped to understand what was going on.