On the use and care of Stormravens in 6th Edition (tactica)

 40K, List Building, Tactics, Unit review  2 Responses »
Aug 222012
 

Note: I’m writing this from a GK pov, but a lot of it is applicable to Blood Angels as well.

Ah, the flying land raider.  Using a Stormraven was pretty simple in 5th edition, at least for Grey Knight players.  Blood Angels sometimes got tricked into using it as a gun boat, because of their fancy schmancy Bloodstrike missiles, but it’s use to GK players was very clear: Deliver Termiantors and maybe a psychic dreadnought to your opponents face.

I basically used my Stormraven like a really expensive drop pod in 5th edition.  I’d load in Draigo and either some paladins or purifiers (later it was purifiers, because I decided I need the fearless in case of tank shock) and just ran the thing straight at the enemy first turn.  24″, get a 4+ cover save (librarians and shrouding were popular to make it 3+, but I had neither the points nor the room) and melta some poor tank, just because I could.  That usually failed to hit or pen for whatever perverse reason despite the demands of statistics, but who cared?  Draigo was now on the enemy door step.

Then, always, the enemy would fire basically their entire army at it.  They had to, because if it didn’t go down, draigo was going to get to charge whatever he wanted, the SR was going to go nuts shooting, and it would be pretty much an auto-win for me.  Since I was often fighting fellow GK, I’d really look forward to shooting the mindstrikes, but that rarely ever happened.

Stormravens are tough, even in 5th ed, but most of the time, they’d be able to bring it down.  (how many shots does it take to get to the center of a SR?  ”most of whatever you got”, honest assessment at the time.)

That was fine, though, because 1) It usually took a full turn of shooting to do that.  2) Draigo and friends, again, is on your doorstep.  They’d just climb out of the wreckage, and murder everything within arms-reach.  Turn 2 charge.

Now, keep in mind, that was easily a 700-800 pt investment in that one Stormraven, 200 pts of which usually got blown up on the way in.  But still, totally worth it.

 

Soooo……..flyers are awesome in 6th, and the SR is a Flyer.  The Stormraven was good in 5th, so it must be total broken-sauce in 6th, right?   Uh……..yes and no.  The truth is trying use my SR in 6th has left me a little conflicted and confused.

Firstly, let’s be clear, it is a flyer, and flyers are gross.  If your opponent doesn’t have appropriate counter measures (which are hard to come by, absent their own flyers, at the moment) you’re going to run rough shod all over them.

But how are you going to use it?  How are you going to use those 205-260 points to further your goals in winning the game?

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 Posted by Prometheus at 12:52 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

The Problem with Psychic Disciplines and Rulebook powers in 6th Edition 40k

 40K  Comments Off
Aug 172012
 

 

So everybody having fun with your new psychic powers out of the main 6th ed rulebook?  They’re fun, right?  You got them basically for free, and they’re shiny, new, interesting, and fun to try out. Fun is important.  This is a game, and we play it for fun, so if that’s your only concern, this in’t really the article for you.  If you’re the kind of player who plays orks because you get to roll on lots of tables, roll big handfuls of dice, and shout “waagh!!!!!!!!” at least once a game, then the basic rulebook powers are exactly what you’re looking for. The real problem is that from a competitive standpoint, they suck.  They A) mostly aren’t very good (with the exception Divination) B) aren’t even vaguely balanced (as illustrated by everyone talking about Divination). I’m going to start with some facts, some stats, some major points of discussion, and then go into more depth from there. We”ll go into this in more detail later, but to start the conversation off, the main problems with the powers are:

  1. Randomness, far more random than for spell lores in Warhammer Fantasy.  Most 40K psykers only have 1 or 2 powers, while fantasy wizards can have anywhere from 1-4.  Additionally, fantasy wizards get to choose whenever they roll the same power twice — 40k psykers just have to roll again.  Games Workshop, as a company, clearly does not appreciate how un-fun randomness is for many players.
  2. Multiple points of failure:  First you have to roll to cast it, then often to hit, there’s a deny the witch roll, and often additional defenses beyond that (Grey Knights, Eldar, Space Wolves, and Tyranids. Necrons have a small defense you’re unlikely to see.  SW can layer 3 different types of defenses, if you read the rules liberally!  Great rules writing again, GW!).
  3. Utter lack of balance.  Some powers are great nearly all the time.  Some are awful.  Many are great, but only in specific situations.  Which you have absolutely no chance to plan for, because you will at best only get the power you want 50% of the time!  Disciplines that have a good Primaris Power (the only really good one is for Divination) are clearly favored over the others.
  4. Warp Charge and Psyker Mastery Levels.  The vast majority of psykers in the game are Level 1.  It’s all fine and good to formalize the process for determining how many powers (including force weapons) you can cast a turn, but Warp Charge 2 powers are distributed among the disciplines in a very haphazard way.  There are four warp charge 2 powers (two of which suck) but two disciplines don’t get any and one gets two (and those are the only good ones).  If you decided you needed a “second level” of powers, wouldn’t it make sense to make sure that each discipline got one each?  They seem to have been randomly judged and assigned levels by completely different person after they were written.
  5. Wild inconsistency in how you defend against spells.  Is there anyone who thinks rune weapons remaining the same while psychic hoods were drastically nerfed wasn’t an oversight?  I doubt many people begrudge Tyranids their Shadow of the Warp, but while it certainly makes sense for Eldar to have powerful and sophisticated anti-psyker methods, doesn’t everyone agree the “whole board” is a bit much?
  6. Primaris Powers.  Or rather, the fact that because selecting powers is random, and cannot be planned for, a discipline’s worth is primarily determined by how good the Primaris Power is.

Some basic stats that are important for a discussion of psykers and psychic powers in 40K:

  • A normal psyker has a 1/18th chance of suffering a perils of the warp.  (1/36 of double 1′s, 1/36 of double 6′s =2/36=1/18)  This is, just to give you a feeling, the same odds that a marine will kill himself with one shot of plasma. (1/6*1/3=1/18)

 

  • Chance of passing Leadership 10 (i.e., successfully casting your power, to start) is 91%.  This is the leadership of basically all psykers that are worth talking about.
  • Chance to pass ld 9 is 82.7%.  Aside from primaris psykers for IG, there are barely any psykers with ld 9.  Grey Knight Justicars are (and the squads are often ld 8) but that’s a little outside this discussion.  (Ooo!  Dark Angel Librarians.  Which are clearly a relic.  Does anybody take those?  Didn’t think so.)
  • Chance to pass Ld 8 is 71.7%.  This really only comes up for weird things like henchmen psykers (which are stupid cheap for what they do, so few complain) and GK techmarine.

 

  • Chance to hit Ld 5 is 27.5%.  Bonus pts for figuring out why that matters.  (it’s what you need to pick the model you want with a focused witchfire)  Basically we’re talking about double the normal chance of a precision shot, that’s it.

 

There are, just so you know, exactly three kinds of powers. No, not witchfire’s, blessings, novas, et al..  The three types of powers you need to worry about are Buffs, debuffs, and Damage.

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 Posted by Prometheus at 4:16 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

6th ed and Grey Knights part 3: A unit by unit analysis and Tactica

 40K  Comments Off
Jul 242012
 

 

So, continuting my series from last week (Parts One and Two) I wanted to continute the discussion of how 6th edition affects Grey Knights.  On to Fast Attack!

 

Stormraven

Upsides of 6th:

  • Flyers are broken (at the moment), didjya hear?  Seriously, it’s messed up, but there is almost nothing more important than how many Flyers you can bring in 6th edition
  • The Stormraven is quite tough for a flyer.
  • It has a lot of guns, and can be given a fair bit of variety to it’s guns\
  • It is also a transport, with an assault ramp no less
  • If you’re worried about it crashing with your dudes inside, they can always jump out the back

Downsides of 6th:

  • It’s quite expensive, the most expensive flyer by far.
  • Using it as a transport is much harder in this edition
  • Dual Gunship/Transport function means you are wasting some of it’s capacity now.

Continue reading »

 Posted by Prometheus at 4:46 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

6th edition 40k, and how it affects Grey Knights: A unit by unit analysis and Tactica

 40K  4 Responses »
Jul 182012
 

So……6th edition.  I thought I’d make my first post, in just about a year, with it, but I wanted the time to digest some of what is coming out of it. I have lots of thing to say about 6th edition itself, but I wanted to discuss the effects on various GK units more, merely because that is so high at the top of my mind.  I think there’s no where else to start but the top.

Generally:  Grey Knights were generally considered at the top of the heap at the close of 5th.  Personally, I think Necrons were probably right up there with them, but I think this fact was in general underappreciated–mostly due to Necrons needing a fair bit of finesse and synergy between units, while GK units tend to be a lot more general purpose, self-sufficient, and of course they’re marines (they didn’t use to be, dammit!) which makes them a fair bit  fail-proof. Well, that’s gone now, at least to a degree.  Which is good!  Grey Knights certainly got their boosts in 6th, but so did most other codexes, some to a far larger degree than GK.  Again, I say this is good.  I’m sure there are some power gamers out there who want their “I win” button (it was never really there) but personally, I get tired of people assuming I’m beating them just because I brought Grey Knights.  I think most players are similar.

General Upsides of 6th for GK:

  • Psychic powers are far more important now, and Grey Knights have a ton of psykers, and possibly the  most powerful on average, in the game.  Only a few models can switch out their power for basic rule book powers, but it’s still more than most armies get.
  • Massive nerf to psychic hoods means that GK will get their powers off far more often. Most of our native powers are buffs, meaning Deny The Witch and Psychic Hoods are inapplicable.
  • Conversely, we’re now one of the best psychic defended armies in the game.  Because of how Deny The Witch works, a GK unit (not henchmen) will almost always get a 5+ save against powers, very often 4+ (if they include a Psychic Mastery level 2 IC, which is going to happen a lot), and this is on top of The Aegis. That’s pretty powerful, and unlikely to change through FAQs or new codexes (which you should expect with Space Wolves and Eldar, eventually)
  • Generally speaking infantry Dakka is much more important, and Grey Knights, particularly Strike Squads, are really good at Dakka.
General Downsides of 6th for GK:
  • Fortitude is much weaker now.  This is part of the general nerf to vehicles, but we had really good vehicles, and Fortitude was a little broken.  Still, the change hurts us more than some others.
  • You no longer win the shooting match quite as definitively with rapid firers like Tac Squads, as they can at least hit you at the same range, and are much cheaper.
So, that sounds like a much larger upside to downside, but keep in mind almost everyone else got a similar list.  Much was given in 6th, very little (besides vehicles was taken away).
So let’s look at it unit by unit, shall we?  We’ll start with Troops.
 Posted by Prometheus at 6:03 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

I came in 2nd in the 40k Ard Boyz

 40K, Grand Tournament, Grey Knights, Tactics  4 Responses »
Aug 172011
 

So, I went down to my local store this past weekend, where I am in fact a paying club member, to play in the 40k Ard Boyz preliminaries.  I came in second, out of a fairly small 13 people, just narrowly missing first with a 61-58 battle points ratio.  Two other folks tied for 3rd at 48 pts.  I think the day mostly went pretty well, and I’m ok with coming in second, since it qualified me for the semi-finals……but in the semi-finals I need first, so I know I have a little work ahead of me.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the list I took:

Continue reading »

 Posted by Prometheus at 2:30 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Lord Kaldor Draigo saved my butt at Boston Brawlcon: A tactical overview.

 40K, Grand Tournament, Grey Knights, List Building, Tactics, Unit review  2 Responses »
Jul 072011
 

So, I guess my first post became at least partly a rant about my painting score, not really what I meant it to be, so let’s move on to what I really care about:  Tactics. For reference, my full list that I brought can be found here:  Draigo and Stormraven List.   First, some general thoughts:

  • People targeted the Land Raider Redeemer much more aggressively than I was expecting.  I thought they would be going after Stormraven first in all cases, since it was faster, more fragile, and had a much more nasty payload.  Maybe people didn’t realize just how nasty that payload (Draigo, Paladins w/ psycannons and a BroBanner, and a dreadnought) really was?  Didn’t seem like it, though.
  • The converse of this has to be that I was using the Stormraven too conservatively.  I was always turbo boosting it, but often up the side.  I probably should have sent it right up the middle, since I had designed the paladins and dread to be able to fight well if it crashed and left them center of board.  In the end, I probably just need more practice with this list.
  • Draigo and the Paladins, were the absolute MVPs, they performed fantastically.  Of course, they have to be, they cost like 625 combined.  Still, they were just awesome to behold, and were durable as all hell.  I think I lost a paladins twice to Str 8 Instant Death, but by and large Draigo did manage to keep them safe.  Even though they often had a lot of ground to cover, they made it across open terrain, and just bashed the enemies face in.  Game 1, all else was lost, they straight up ekked out a win for me.  Game 2, I lost, but Draigo, by himself, came so close to making it a tie.  Game 4, Draigo happily fought basically her entire demon army.  Nearly died, and all the paladins did, but he pulled through.  Very thematically appropriate.  I didn’t actually get to use their psycannons as much as I hoped, I wonder if I should re-balance things between them and the terminators, weapon load-out wise.
  • GKT underperformed, a little, mostly because they got their Redeemer shot out from under them.  But, that meant their lack of a psycannon was painful.  I had meant the paladins to get shot down far from the battle line, not them.
  • Yeah, kinda like I thought, I really wish the psycannon dread in the Stormraven was a venerable dreadnought.  He performed OK, he was in a lot tough situations, often contributed, but the durability would have been super, super useful.  He almost always did die, eventually, at least twice got knocked on his butt almost immediately.  I would say from experience a venerable dread is something like twice as durable, and BS 5 never hurts.  Problem is, I just cannot see how to fit the extra 50 (it’s 60, but I’d ditch the heavy flamer, too) in this list.
  • My Grey Knight Strike Squad was kinda “meh.”  I suppose that was to be expected, they were the average guys in an other wise all-star list.
  • Psyfleman worked great, did what I wanted, though I guess he was never really needed; the first time I fought rhinos, he got knocked on his ass before he had a chance to fire, the second time, his fire output was just gravy on an otherwise slaughter fest.
  • I had some heavy metal in there–an LR, SR, rhino, 2 dreads, and all those termie models, but apparently target priority was too clear for my enemy.  I could use with more, or harder, targets.  Which leaves us right back the dual LR list, unfortunately, because I don’t know how to fit more metal into this current list.
Review of the list by item: Continue reading »
 Posted by Prometheus at 5:20 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Reviewing the Grey Knight FAQ…….how well did they do?

 40K, FAQ, Grey Knights, Rules, Unit review  4 Responses »
Jun 142011
 

The internets, by and wide, seem pretty happy with the new GK codex. Well, I’m not.

 

No, it’s not sour grapes cuz they made the GK codex less powerful, or nerfed my favorite trick.  Quite the opposite, I think it made GK more powerful.

 

What I hate is that these FAQs (both the Main Rulebook FAQ and Grey Knight FAQ) is that it was kinda the usual thing, only more so.  They answered questions that no one was asking, didn’t answer most of the questions actually had, and then made some extra stupid decisions besides.

 

So, I’m going to grade the FAQs.  1 pt for each questions answered, -1 pt for each totally stupid ruling made, and then divide that by the total questions people actually had.  I’ll leave the questions they answered that no one was asking neutral.

 

Questions they answered that no one was asking (0 pts):

From the Main FAQ:

  1. Q: Are Wounds from Dangerous Terrain tests allocated….?
  2. Q: Can a model equipped with multiple grenades us….?
  3. Q: What psychic powers count as psychic shooting…..?
  4. Q: Do psychic shooting attacks need to roll to hit….?

From GK FAQ:

  1. Q: If a unit is the target of Unyielding Anvil, from the Grand Strategy special rule, and it splits into combat squads…?
  2. Q: Can vehicles benefit from the effect of The Shrouding psychic power if they are in range?
  3. Q: What effect does the Cleansing Flame psychic powerhave on vehicles?
  4. Q: Does a Dreadknight armed with two Nemesis doomfists get an extra attack in close combat?
  5. Q: Can Brother-Captain Stern use his Zone of Banishment psychic power if he is not engaged incombat?
  6. Q: If Justicar Thawn is dead at the end of a game involving kill points, does he only give away one killpoint regardless of how many times he was killed?
  7. Q: When are the shooting attacks from Inquisitor Coteaz’s I’ve Been Expecting You special rule fired?
  8. Q: Will Inquisitorial Servitors in a squad without an Inquisitor that has been joined by a Techmarine stillsuffer from Mindlock?
  9. Q: If a Callidus Assassin chooses a unit of vehicles as itstarget for its Polymorphine special rule what facing ishit?
  10. Q: If an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor takes 2 Daemonblades how is this resolved?
  11. Q: Does the entire unit need to be equipped with rad, psyk-out and/or psychotroke grenades for their effects to work or is just one model being equiped with them enough?
  12. Q: Do you take into account the strength increase fromthe psybolt and psyflame ammunition vehicle upgradeswhen working out if a weapon is a defensive weaponor not? If a vehicle has either of these upgrades, mustyou use them?
  13. Q: Can you only take an Inquisitorial henchmen warband if you have an Inquisitor in your army?

OK, folks that is 4+14=17 absolutely useless questions.  They don’t hurt anything, but seriously, no one wondered this stuff.  Just wasting our time and assuming we’re stupid.

 

Continue reading »

 Posted by Prometheus at 7:34 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Servo-skulls are probably better than you think they are……and I know you think they’re pretty good.

 40K, Grey Knights, Rules, Tactics, Unit review  8 Responses »
Jun 102011
 

So this may be the shortest blog post ever, but there’s something I wanted to share with you.

We know servo-skulls are good, right?  Stupid cheap, cheapest if you can get them on a techmarine or inquisitor, and they let you play all sorts of board control games:

  • They deny infiltrators within 12″
  • They stop scout moves by the enemy within 12″
  • They reduce scatter for Deep Striking within 12″
  • The reduce scatter for blast templates similarly

I mean, we all know this stuff, and it’s been my policy to take 2 or 3 of them since the codex came out.  But I was stricken, in a game today, by just how awesome they can be.  It was GK on GK, and we were playing a practice game for the Boston Brawlcon that’s coming up, mission 4. It was spearhead deployment, and he had an infiltrating vindicare that I was quite scared of taking out my Land Raiders.  I was able to, using my 3 servo-skulls and careful deployment, keep that vindicare more than 36″ from any of my  units.

Turn 2 I take him out with a couple autocannon shots, easy.  145 pts down.

Continue reading »

 Posted by Prometheus at 1:47 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Grey Knight Techmarines are awesome…….and everyone is using them wrong

 40K, Grey Knights, List Building, Tactics  12 Responses »
Jun 092011
 

Let me ask you something: When trolling the internets for the forum monkeys best army lists, and someone brings up techmarines, how many times have you seen this?

Techmarine, Conversion beamer

Techmarine, Conversion beamer

Techmarine, Conversion beamer

?????

Betcha when you saw that, the forum poster proudly declared something along the lines of “Regardless of your build, you don’t want your Techmarine in close combat.” (Nikephoros, Bringer of Victory)

 

O rly?

 

First of all, I don’t really want to dis the conversion beamer…….OK, yeah I do.  It’s 20 pts, right?  Except you have to give up the servo harness for it, something which a vanilla techmarine pays 25 pts for.  So really, it’s costing you 45 pts.  That’s a fair bit.

I actually have a fair bit of experience with conversion beamers, having been fond of heavy dreadnought lists in the past.  You know what a conversion beamer usually is? 90% of the time it’s a Str 8 Ap4 small blast.  That btw, is when I had the master of the forge mounted on a bike, which gives you relentless.  You’re talking about mounting on a single wound model that cannot move with it.  42″ is long a way, folks.  Even if by some miracle your preferred target is that far away (because you can’t move) in 5th ed I virtually guarantee they get cover saves.

 

What I’m saying is that you’re paying 110 pts for what is for most purposes a plasma cannon.  Usually worse, actually, except against vehicles.  Does that sound worth it to you?

Continue reading »

 Posted by Prometheus at 2:47 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

Lord Kaldor Draigo….he ain’t that expensive.

 40K, Grey Knights, List Building, Tactics  2 Responses »
Jun 052011
 

This gets mentioned a lot:  Draigo is expenisve.  Actually, the internets put it more along the lines of “OMG, he is soooooo expensive, why would you ever take such a beast?”  or “GK are so expensive, you have to save points and get the cheapest HQ possible.”  A sort of typical quote is Zjoekov on Kirby’s 3++, ”My gawd, 275 points for a model with a 12″ threat range unless you take a 200+ transport for him?”

People also seem think it’s all about the paladins with Draigo, just as you get Crowe specifically for purifiers.  But that isn’t really fair of course, Crowe himself is nearly useless, and while purifiers are pretty easy to find (multiple) uses for, paladins seem hard to find applications that will justify their cost.

But while Draigo makes fun little things like dropping down a 55 pt scorer possible, it doesn’t seem to me that’s necessarily why you might get him.  Because it seems to me that he does everything a regular Grand Master does, but better.

 

Let’s compare the options.  What do we get with a regular GM?

  • He’s got the same stat-line as regular SM captain in terminator armor (a rare choice, to be sure).
  • You could basically have this stat-line with a GK brother captain. (1 point of BS aside) for 150 pts, so we know we’re paying about the same as we would with the SM captain.  Actually, when you count in the Aegis, psy-out grenades, psychic powers, and the Nemesis Force Weapon, you actually have to figure we’re getting a pretty big discount.  Makes me laugh, since people complain about how expensive GK HQs are.
  • We pay 25 pts more for the Grand Master, the only real difference being that he gets Grand Strategy. Which is fine, that’s totally worth it, so much so almost no one would buy a plain Brother Captain.
  • Just like the SM captain, he ain’t exactly a combat monster for his points, which is why so many people take a look at Librarians. But, GMs have Grand Strategy, which really does affect the entire army in positive ways.

That’s what we get for 175 pts. There’s a few options that most people agree are must haves:

  • There’s the three big “I win” grenades: Blind, rad, and pyschotroke.  These grenades have a huge multiplicative effect on the effectiveness of the unit the GM is with, making it unlikely for whatever hard-ass unit you’re fighting to be able to fight back effectively.
  • Digital weapons.  Cheap, you’re probably going to fail to wound, you’re going to get use out of this.
  • Mastercrafted weapon.  Really the same deal, you’re going to miss, it’s another bite at the apple.

But, look, now the GM costs 220 pts.  Yes, you get a lot for that.  But it’s also really expensive.

 

Soooo……..what do we get with Draigo? Continue reading »

 Posted by Prometheus at 1:32 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,
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