So, they are somehwat stuffed as far as I can see. The artillary is inferior to other races (what would you rather have - a void spinner or 3 manticores? Or 3 skyrays instead of 3 armour 6+ hydra etc etc), things like warhounds and aircraft cost the same as marines, yet have strategy rating 2, you will always have to plan for fighting corners and all the changes bar 1 were to make the army worse (no more omniscient deathstrikes, no more warhounds with leader) and the boost was quite a small tweak to baneblades that still I think leaves them somewhat undergunned. Stuff like Leman Russ are just silly to take - very susceptable to blast markers, very slow and due to doubling everywhere a lot of dice but not much firepower, not to mention the cost of a big formation failing an activation test. The random commissars means in practice you have either enough or too few, rolling very high is pretty irrelevant due to the effect of commissars on deathstrikes and the like.
The mechanised route seems best, but I just don't think they are that good if you fail to roll enough commissars. You clearly have to plan on playing corners, getting bombarded, going second and not having enough leader so being fairly static. So how to overcome all that?
If you go for 2 mech companies (SC+Hydra 550 and mech+fire support+hydra 600 BTS supported by 2 planes 150) as the attack core as the artillary and tank companies are clearly out, what to support it with for the other 1700? You need scouts to try and fend off the all to common terminators, hydra to try and break up air attacks and then another infantry company for more support picks. I'd always want a deathstrike formation as they are too much of a threat to ignore and the army otherwise has pretty poor firepower.
600 Mech+FS+Chimera+Hydra
550 SC+Hydra
350 Inf+FS
250 Inf
150 Hydra
150 Hydra
150 Roughriders
100 Sentinels
100 Sentinels
200 Deathstrikes
250 Manticores
150 Thunderbolts
The above uses all the points but looks a bit flaky. But all the formations I could think of to put in aren't that tough, for instance replacing the manticores and fire support with a stormtrooper formation.
Or simply bulk out a bit with more sentinels in the hope they do something battle winning.
Could replace the inf+FS and deathstrikes with a shadowsword company, but now starting to lose activations (or a warhound pair
).Anybody else have any ideas?
it might be they are simply better suited to a one day tournament where there is less chance of rolling to few commissars.
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