Apocolocyntosis wrote:
Long fangs, 3 shots, why? are they the best devastators in 40k universe? I realise you pay a cost for it, but still can't see a reason: 1 or 3 shots … still places a blast marker. Also makes the longfang formation very expensive. Take them to 2 shots, make the upgrade cheaper, make the formation cheaper, easier to list build.
Long Fangs historically had 3 members each armed with a heavy weapon +/- a sergeant to call fire on targets and the 40K fluff had them so that they were extremely old and highly experienced, meaning they could essentially split fire etc. and pick on different units. Removing the missile launcher attacks from Grey Hunters forces you to make a choice about whether you want shooting or not. Making them expensive was part of this to balance the increase, as that increase comes at around half the cost of another activation. If I make them 2 shots and cheaper all you get is better Great Companies as then they are CC3+ and decent shooting as well. Not sure an air Assault with this would be terribly fair - granted you can still Air Assault with this now but again, the cost counter hurts you in other places especially since the SW air assets also cost +25 points more.
Apocolocyntosis wrote:
* Grey coy size. being able to take them up to 10 stands + the transports seems too much for ATSKNF power armour. At one point i shot 5 units out from a GC (+hunter+raz) in one go … and the result was still as big as an entire unharmed tactical formation. I'm not sure they need to be that tough. If i'd have to contend with the two upgraded GC *and* the terminators on full effectiveness it would have been a real struggle. As it was, I was able to kite the GCs until ready on my own terms.
Yep this list isn't the norm obviously.
Kiting is a tactic that works well. Removing one rhino hurts a big formation a lot as you have a large body tied down to a smaller section of the board.
The theme of this army was "small horde" given the SW tendency to have larger groups of troops within their established "company" sizes. Also, the more you put in one place takes away somewhere else. You can have two really large formations that soak a huge amount of damage (and points) but your activation count, and manoeuvrability, drops way down unless you pad with less effective formations like Fenris Wolves. Tying other formation type numbers to the number of GCs also limits how many other formation types you can take. e.g you build two large GCs you only get two Wolf Guard etc. 3 smaller = 3 Wolf Guard. Essentially, the pool of those troop types gets drawn from the Great Company - albeit in an abstract way.
Apocolocyntosis wrote:
(again, probably reasons for this in development i've overlooked, just highlighting my main points in combination with what JZ has covered already)
No worries Apoc, I think (hope) I covered the development reasons above.
Thanks heaps to you and JZ for this report and feedback.
it IS an evil list. Rub some funk on it, brother and make it your own!