Tactical Command
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Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=84&t=27105		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  Xenocidal Maniac [ Wed Mar 19, 2014 12:05 am ]
Post subject:  Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
Read the battle report on my wordpress blog here

http://xenocidalmaniac.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/blood-angels-vs-steel-legion-unpainted/
Author:  Dobbsy [ Wed Mar 19, 2014 7:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
Nice report. A few comments:

Blood Angels have AT. I don't leave home without Land Raiders these days! :) That said I could see that a stand alone formation might be helpful. A Devastator formation with LRs packs a punch though.

The table is incredibly open with great swathes of open long-range fire lanes which really plays into SL hands.....

Assaulting LRs with Assault Marines always ends badly even if they do have Dreads in tow. There's just not enough MW to damage the LRs effectively. How do you feel Terminators would have gone in that Air Assault?

One thing I learned using drop forces: Never drop into the middle of the enemy's deployment (or an obvious drop point) - it just allows envelopment and a quick destruction. My first attempt at a drop list once had a large reinforced Great Company and a Wolf Guard pack engaged by Eldar on all sides and broken with nowhere to retreat to. All units removed from table! Try to roll a flank. ;)

Furiosos - I can see your concern. Given the lack of shooting I wonder if they should just go back to 50 points.

I'd like to see these two lists play again knowing what you learned from your game.
Author:  mordoten [ Wed Mar 19, 2014 9:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
Cool report!

You guys should try to get bigger bllocks of terrain made up, especially terrain that blocks LoS. Thats way to much firelanes on a table to be fair for assault-oriented armies.
Author:  Borka [ Wed Mar 19, 2014 9:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
A nice report! Thanks for sharing.

mordoten wrote:
Cool report!

You guys should try to get bigger bllocks of terrain made up, especially terrain that blocks LoS. Thats way to much firelanes on a table to be fair for assault-oriented armies.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing when reading the report
Author:  kyussinchains [ Wed Mar 19, 2014 9:50 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
fun report, thanks for taking the time to write it up :) always enjoy watching the steel legion win ;)

I have to agree with Dobbsy, Mordoten and Borka, the terrain was very open and it was always going to be an uphill struggle for the blood angels against a shooty army like steel legion
Author:  jimmyzimms [ Wed Mar 19, 2014 6:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
I assume this is the 2.12 version vs the 2.2 Alternate (the one with THawk Transporters and the Sanguinary Guard)

I concur that this board is highly biased to the Steel Legion's favor. I also know from our private conversation that was due to a bit of beardiness from the opponent. I'd expect about 50% more "stuff" in play. That's the epitome of a parking lot board. ;D

Furioso/Vulcan Dreads are massively overpriced (actually all Dreads are totally overpriced to begin with but our neurotic need to make everything divisible by 25 is at fault there [2cents]). They should be 50 points, period. The extra utility in CC is more than offset from the lack of shooty available to them. That doesn't mean they are worthless, just that they are overpriced.

The Stormraven Alphastrike is the primary anti-armour formation for the Blood Angels. Again, I know that you didn't take them as this was supposed to be a "painted only" battle despite your opponents lack of paint. I think that planetfalling them would of made a huge difference in the game.

Not that it matters for this list, but the 2.2 with Sanguinary Guard and access to Thunderhawk Transporters would get your Land Raiders into assault supporting range which can be devastating to RA armour with crossfire bonuses. The SG MW attacks are the same.

I think the BA benefit from clipping assaults even more than Codex Marines. Trying to roll up a flank I think might of potentially gone better. Another thought is to leverage the Landing Craft as part of an assault. It can soak up plenty of return dakka and is a LOS blocking feature as it is a WE. Of course YMMV. I do have a 3k drop list leveraging that attack plan that I've had some success with.

I don't think I could have done any better however considering some of the dice luck you had.
Author:  pati [ Wed Mar 19, 2014 11:19 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
I miss the whirlwinds :) Arty helps you to put Blast markers to formations like a LR company. With that, it's harder to activate, and gives you +2 Combat Result if you engage them from a drop attack :)

And your enemy will keep the 5cm distance between the units, so you can put more BM's on them with Deathwinds, and reach them easier with an assault, because of the larger formations!

If you use a lot of drop units, it's useful to have a captain with them, to engage with 3 formations, instead of one. You can boost this with a terminator+captain formation, to teleport them in the middle (and to correct the scattering of the drop pods), and engage with 3 formations.

I always use at least 1 unit of termies (or an airborne assault marine formation) to support/correct the drop units, or engage with multiple units.

Remember that a tactical formation has 6 units, and has 6 rocket launchers /next to the devastators 8. I use tacticals to CC against not RA armor units! (with attached 2 assault marines, in rhinos, they can rush through the map -6 tactical, 2 assault, 3 rhino in a CC is 11 unit- a good chance to have more surviving units to have better combat results, than your oppononet)

Devastators are a fragile unit, and in a BA army, there's no need of FF guys :D don't spend to much money on a fragile unit, like buying razorbacks for them!waste of points :)
Author:  jimmyzimms [ Thu Mar 20, 2014 12:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
I like your point about the Termie captain teleport, pati. That's fun. :)

I will also counter that BA Devestators are meant to be deployed with Redeemers. On their own they don't have enough shooty. Together they work wonders.
Author:  dptdexys [ Thu Mar 20, 2014 12:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
Thanks for a very enjoyable report.
The Death Co. seems to do an air assault in turns 1 and 2 unless I've mis-read the report.
Author:  Xenocidal Maniac [ Thu Mar 20, 2014 7:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
Thanks for all the comments, guys. Sorry I've been so slow in responding. I'll try to address all the points -

A formation of Land Raiders would be IMMENSELY helpful I think. However, I understand if it doesn't fit with the theme of the list. Even access to Predator Annihilators would be great. Maybe 0-1 or something. Or not. But if the army is to be very limited in AT capability, then it needs something to offset that disadvantage, which, at the moment, I feel it doesn't.

To answer your question about how Terminators would have fared in the assault - probably worse, simply because they wouldn't have put out the same number of attacks.

I agree about the terrain and in retrospect am a little bit salty about the matter, but... what can you do. I like how the "streets" you made happened to double as long firing lanes, esadous ;)

I agree with you, Jimmy, that planetfalling Stormravens could have helped a lot. I ran such a formation against Iron Warriors to great effect in a recent game. I'll try to get some painted up and see how that goes when I play SL next. However, I can't think of another flank I could have rolled up. I took my right flank nearly entirely. I contemplated trying to roll up the left flank, but that would have entailed assaulting the Russ company supported by like 5 Baneblades.

Can you explain how Redeemers work with Devs with their vastly different effective ranges?

dptdexys, you are absolutely right - we both screwed that up. Just an error. For some reason we thought that the landed Thunderhawk was supposed to exit the table at the end of the turn that it arrived on. Of course that is not true. So, the Death Company could not have Thunderhawk assaulted turn 2. In my mind, this is yet another strike against the list.

I agree with the comments someone else made in the Blood Angels thread - I feel like almost everything in this list is more expensive than it should be. Dobbsy, I love the list, don't get me wrong, but I feel like nearly every formation could use a 25 point discount across the board. I'm outnumbered, have almost no anti-tank, have no access to titans, and have... what? Frenzy in the way of an offset to those disadvantages? (Which is actually a huge disadvantage) Depending on the matchup, it can feel like a very uphill battle at times.

Or, maybe a point reduction is not necessary, but there's got to be something to beef these guys up. If they're going to have elite numbers, they should fight at an elite level. Maybe give every formation subject to frenzy "inspiring" when they initiate an assault or something crazy like that.
Author:  Dobbsy [ Thu Mar 20, 2014 10:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
XM maybe try using the Stormravens more and maybe put some LRs into a Dev formation or two to give you the AT punch you need. There will most likely be a couple of points changes but I don't think 25 points across every unit is fair.

In terms of the Terminators, I think given they bring a MW attack to the party you may have had better luck versus the LRs. Maybe something to think about next game? Air Assault with teleported Termies waiting for a combined assault...?

I would say for the purposes of playtests, that tables really need to have a more fair spread of terrain - perhaps the 2 features per 2 foot square is a good start(there's a terrain convention? Some woods or hills break up fire lanes nicely.
Author:  Xenocidal Maniac [ Thu Mar 20, 2014 10:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
Ok, I was maybe being a bit OTT about 25 point reductions across the board.

I'll give some Stormravens a try next time and see how it goes.

I would have had less MW attacks with Termies. I had two Furiosos and a Chaplain in that DC squad, so I was throwing out 5 MW attacks in addition to 10 regular. Termies would have had 4 + 4. The only advantage the termies would have had is the RA save.

Agreed regarding the terrain. I'll give it another go and let you know how it goes.

However, I do still think BA needs a bit of tweaking.
Author:  kyussinchains [ Thu Mar 20, 2014 11:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
The landed thunderhawk does exit the table (unless it stays landed) but it can only embark/disembark troops once per turn so it can't reload the death company and fly off (that's what a second thawk is for... ;))

I think the RA of the terminators makes a massive difference as they tend to take very few casualties in an assault, also they just love chaplains which would have given the extra MW attack.....
Author:  Dobbsy [ Fri Mar 21, 2014 1:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
kyussinchains wrote:
I think the RA of the terminators makes a massive difference as they tend to take very few casualties in an assault, also they just love chaplains which would have given the extra MW attack.....

Spot on! Thanks for being more informative Kyuss! :D
Author:  Xenocidal Maniac [ Fri Mar 21, 2014 1:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Blood Angels vs. Steel Legion
Right, I know they have RA, but statistically speaking, that would have halved the number of casualties the unit received at the expense of 1 MW attack and 6 regular attacks. It's roughly a wash. Doing the math quickly in my head, I believe the DC wins out just slightly in terms of average assault res.
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