AMTL vs Iron Warriors

Please bear with the fact that this was a bit of a cobbled-together game. Steve was coming up for a barbeque, so it seemed to good an opportunity to try the AMTL list (in particular, the controversial Plasma Destructor profile) to miss.
The models are improvised (40K terminators with base-heighteners standing in for Reavers, and marine scouts for Sentinels)

AMTL:
[] Warlord Titan
Quake Cannon, Quake Cannon, Quake Cannon (9BP Macro Indirect: No Hiding!!!)
Carapace Landing Pad, Legate Supreme Commander

[] Reaver Titan
Deathstrike Missile, Plasma Destructor, Plasma Destructor

[] Reaver Titan
Deathstrike Missile, Plasma Destructor, Plasma Destructor

[] Recon 4 Sentinels
[] Recon 4 Sentinels
[] 2 Thunderbolts

Iron Warriors:
Ordinatus Mederingard (BTS Big Gun)
Dreadnoughts (in drop pod)
Obliterators
2 Armoured formations with a landraider each
Supreme on foot
Defiler formations
+ anything else you see in a photo

Steve (Iron Warriors) chose corner deployment, an interesting decision that would increase the distance to objectives.

With Obliterators and Dreadnoughts both arriving in turn 1, the titans deployed behind a long sentinel scout screen. (Left to right: Reaver, Reaver, Warlord)



The iron warriors mass in a corner where they can't be reached by the triple quake cannon on the Warlord. I was interested to find 3 QC can be taken without a surcharge, making this an impressive indirect-fire BTS unit.



The Iron Warrior's own impressive Indirect-fire BTS unit: Ordinatus Mederingard. This weapon is fantastic, but Steve had basically written it off since it is facing 2 Deathstrike Missiles (there's currently no limit on DS in the AMTL list).



=====TURN 1=====

[] Obliterators Teleport in. Blocked from all terrain by AMTL scouts they deployed in range of a reaver. No BM on arrival.

[] The AMTL win initiative, and the Warlord hits the oblits with 3 Quake Cannons. 2 killed, Broken.



[] IW fire the big gun (wanting to use it before they lose it). Reaver takes 2 BM and loses 2 Shields.

[] AMTL Thunderbolts ground attack the Ordinatus, 1 BM and strip 1 Shield (preparation for the Deathstrikes)

[] IW Double Landraiders

[] AMTL Fire Deathstrike at the Ordinatus - Need a 2+, roll a ONE. That's a game-changer.

[] IW Decimators double up field.



[] AMTL Reaver with BM attempts to Fire Deathstrike at the Ordinatus- Rolls 1 to activate. Reroll used to get a hit; Shields down, 1 Hull removed.

[] IW Drop pod comes in on AMTL flank. They'd hoped to find a reaver, but landed in open space since this placement had been anticipated. The Space Ship blast also missed; I think we've played each other too often



[] IW dreads place 2 BM on scout screen, killing one.

[] IW Defilers March

[] IW Supreme Commander infantry march

END OF TURN:
1 AMTL Thunderbolt killed when exiting

=====TURN 2=====

[] IW get initiative, and fire the ordinatus. One Reaver is now up to 5 B

[] IW Dreads very sensibly break the reaver (no damage)





[] AMTL Warlord fires Quake cannons at a defiler formation, macro weapon blasts vapourising 5 of the 6 and sending the last scurrying.



[] IW Double Landraider/tank formation to shoot the unbroken reaver, getting hit by a Scout screen overwatch as they go (1 BM, 1 supressed, no damage). Too few shots remain to do damage, so just 1 BM



[] Reaver moves, and fires just one of its Plasma Destructors at the 5 Dreadnoughts. All are killed (this is 6 macro shots on 2+, so was just the expected outcome of the dice. No need to waste ammo )



[] IW tanks double and shoot, scoring 2 6+ hits on a reaver, goes through reinforced and causes a crit!

[] AMTL Thunderbolt fails to activate.

[] IW tanks double and shoot, 1 more damage to reaver.



[] IW Infantry march.

END OF TURN:
Everything rallies.

=====TURN 3=====

IW Initiative.
[] The Ordinatus is still alive (it dropped to 1 damage point, but that failed DS launch kept it in the game). Fires on reaver carrying BM, and breaks it.

[] IW Cross-fire Reaver. It survives.

[] AMTL Attempt engage with Sentinels; the goal is to clip the weak Hunter and draw Support from a Reavers. Activations fails, reroll used, combat is a draw (the Reaver caused 5 hits, but all had to be allocated to the hunter leaving the rest unscathed). Combat continues, but peters out do to over 20cm distance.



[] AMTL Warlord Quack Cannon into IW armour formation approaching an ojbective, taking out a landraider.

[] IW Cross fire into reaver, breaking it.

[] Thunderbolts break the IW Defiler that was attempting to take a far right objective.

[] Surviving Obliterator breaks the left Sentinels



[] Right sentinels triple onto enemy board half, in direction of blitz.

[] IW Supreme Commander formation doubles and fire on Sentinels, causing a BM but no damage.

END OF TURN:
We'd snatched each others points back, so the game would go to Turn 4.
However, time was unfortunately running out as do my notes. Steve did a couple moves towards objectives, I had a reaver do one last shot, and then we had to call it early.

[] AMTL Reaver fires on a Landraider and 3 Predators and again fires just one of its Plasma Destructors. All are killed (this is 6 macro shots on 2+, so was just the expected outcome of the dice against three 4+ Armour and one 4+ Reinforced armour vehicle)




Comments/Conclusions:

First, thanks for the game Steve! Good of you to play your beautiful iron warriors against an army made of 40k and blutac. The game was far more entertaining than I had expected - probably due to the Deathstrike failing and the Ordinatus surviving to place BM all over the place all game. Steve played a great game as always, probably more aggressive than usual.

Regarding the list, it's one thing to see the Plasma Destructors stats on paper, and another to try them out and just casually wipe formations out. By "casually", I mean without cross-fire, without sustain, at targets up to an incredible 95-115cm from the start location, and without needing to even fire all the weapons. Just one Plasma Destructor was enough for most armoured formations and these things can take 3 of them.

The list building mistake I made was taking a Warlord with Quake Cannon. WHAT A GREAT WEAPON, but it should have taken 3 or 4 more plasma destructors instead. I can see why local player Olly doesn't bother with anything other than about nine Plasma Destructors and some Laser Burners. I only took 4. It should have been more, much more

I recommend they are 3 or 4 shots each (9 to 12 total from a Reaver) rather than 6 (18 total from a reaver).

Death Strikes - The game proved once again that Deathstrikes can miss. I still don't think I should have been allowed to take 2 (or more lol). I appreciate the change Vaaish has made already to make these support missiles carapace (so armies can only take about 4 now, instead of the 9 or 10 deathstrikes they could have last week), but I think the 0-1 restriction should apply to this list like any other.

fun report thanks

titans as terminators all the way! often use mine was warhounds

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Thanks for the report. Just a little bothered that you feel you have to hammer home your opinions about the list in the battle report several times. Don't reallt see the point of that.

If Epic was about destroying formations only i would surely be a mig opponent of 6 MW2+ shot weapons. But no, it's about taking objectives. Something you didn't rally coment on in tis report which makes it hard to use the information. Do you rememebr how it looked objective wise?

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You're welcome. Trying those particular items was the only point of the game really.
The AMTL list generally is pretty good and has really come a long way. It's by no means weak, but nor is it generally over-powered. It's resilient but also (usually) starts with a low activation count and as you say, this is an objective-capturing game.

This was the first battle report I am aware of where the Plasma Destructors were used in this way though; quickly work out how many you need to wipe out a formation, and only fire that many. Unless reinforced armour, it's 1 Plasma Destructor per 5 tanks within 95cm. The other tests I saw used overkill (I think I saw someone mention about a dozen wounds on a warhound for example).

That's why I thought it worth highlighting both times it occurred; firing one of the two (potentially three) PDs was sufficient to annihilate the target.



At the end of turn 3, neither BTS was scored (IW was down to 1 wound, AMTL untouched). Both sides had units on the other side of the table, as I recall IW held their home 3 (so 1-0 at that point). We briefly started turn 4 before needing to quit, and at that point the IW had better board control (or geography as Steve insists on calling it) but not yet decisively. If it had been forced to come down to points, AMTL hadn't lost a formation (just 2 sentinels and a thunderbolt).

Thanks for the report matt!


I do it too, and you've talked about how you feel about certain combinations in your reports as well. Matt's entitled to let us know what his feelings and thoughts are about things.

Matt, back to the game. Can you remember what orders you were putting the Warlord on? It makes quite a difference whether it's hitting without LOS or if it requires LOS and I need to know what the orders were to temper my judgement of the weapon.

On PD:
I'm a bit concerned that there wasn't any use of cover to counter the PD's. The shots of the game above all look like the IW formations are completely out of cover the entire game. If so, that's just waiting for any AT weapons to hammer you.


They can't be 3 shots. Everyone always forgets about the 25 point plasma cannon that has 3x shots.




Just to note here, the Steel Legion Deathstrike formation is 2x carriers for a total of two missiles same as what you took here. I have to disagree about limiting them to 0-1. I think that the maximum you'd be able to take in a 3k list is 6 missiles if you took 3x warlords but there's barely any points left for much else. A more sound option would be 4x cheap reavers with deathstrikes and free weapons since you'd still be able to pull off 8 activations.

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-Vaaish

fun fact, back in the olden days of SM2, a reaver titan couldn't carry any plasma weapon bigger than a blastgun due to it not being able to provide enough power for the larger plasma weapons

how times have changed eh?

interesting report....

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Interesting battle. Shame it couldn't run the full course.
Termi-Titans FTW!


I always found that a bit odd myself. I personally would think that more than two of the same weapon would trigger surcharge promoting a mixed bag of weapons (pretty close to the old titans from AT1 tended to be configured). OTOH I also loved how back then you could drop weapons to gain speed. Too fiddly for EA.

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The Warlord sustained every time. It was behind a forest (which blocked LOS; we play forests identically), but it always managed to find something within 90cm for indirect fire.
Turn 1 that was the Oblitorators, and the AMTL were lucky to get initiative. The other turns the option for the IW were to stay outside of 90 or risk some damage while they tried to win the game.

Had the Oblits not arrived turn 1, the Warlord would probably have had to be the last thing to fire, or move forward and do a weaker indirect shot. It's a GREAT gun though, 9BP Macro does seem fair to me on such an expensive model.



Probably three things worth stressing on this issue.
The IW chose to play corner deployment - that's absolutely key to why moving at high speed to cover the huge distance was more important than always having cover.
The IW player put two formations in the open to break a titan with crossfire, which was a calculated risk/reward issue that paid off.
And finally the photos show the two instances where the titans moved out and fired PDs successfully, rather than the times they didn't.

Hope that helps.