BR1: The Repugnant Ramblers Vs Necrons - 1250pts

The first exhibit of The Repugnant Ramblers ramble round realspace.

The Armies:

The Repugnant Ramblers (DE)

click to see list:

Necrons (NE)

click to see list:

Mission: Contact Lost (Start with 1 tactical objective, at the start of your turn draw as many up to 6 tactical objectives for each objective marker you control)
Deployment: Dawn of War
Night Fight on first turn: Yes
First Turn: NE
Warlord Trait DE: Master Synphoneus (+1/-1 to reserve rolls)
Warlord Trait NE: Enduring Will (warlord has eternal warrior)

Objectives Placement:



My opponent won the roll off to deploy objectives first. The objectives were placed in the same order as their numbers (the objective without a number is number 4, my opponent placing the odd ones and me placing the even ones). Fast Dark Eldar armies often prefer to spread out their objectives (as described in this guide). However my Covenite force has great strategic mobility (pinpoint deepstrike), but terrible tactical mobility (6” movement), so I decided to cluster the objectives as closely as possible. Not only does this make it easier for my slow army to secure objective markers, but it also encourages my opponents army to bunch up.

Deployment:



My opponent won the roll off for picking table halves and chose the side with an objective marker in the deployment zone for an extra tactical objective card draw turn 1. I won the roll off for deployment and chose to deploy second.

He deployed his wraiths and scarabs centrally to make the most of their mobility and allow them to quickly secure the central piece of terrain. The spyder was also deployed centrally to maximise the wraith and scarabs options within its 12” reanimation protocol bubble. The overlord and immortals were deployed on the objective in his deployment zone. The two warrior squads remained embarked on their ghost arks. The tomb blades were deployed in such a way that they could secure any of the objective markers including the one in my deployment zone.

I deployed my talos out of sight behind a bunker.

My opponent decided to go first. This was to get an early lead on points by securing objective markers to get a larger hand of tactical objectives.

Turn 1 (NE):


Tactical Objectives: Secure Objective 4 and Secure Objective 3

At the start of his turn my opponent drew an extra card for controlling the objective 1 (Nothing of Note) in his deployment zone. The necron force shuffled forward. With the scarabs securing objective 2 (Scatter Field: +1 cover). The wraiths secured objective 3 (Targeting Relay: re-roll 1s to hit). After generating a scarab base the spyder moved into the central terrain to ensure that the wraiths still had reanimation protocol. The tomb blades turbo boosted to secure objective 4 (Nothing Of Note). At the end of the turn my opponent scored both his tactical objectives, netting him 2 victory points.  

NE VPs: 2
DE VPs: 0

Turn 1 (DE):


Tactical Objectives: Blood and Guts (D3 VP kill three or more units in assault)

I ponder my opponent turn. He has moved his Tomb blades up for two reasons, firstly to secure the objective, but more importantly to lure my talos out from behind the line of sight blocking terrain. If my talos stay where they are the wraiths would be unable to charge them in their turn (you have to see what you want to charge). I decide to take the bait, if I make the charge on the tomb blades I will most likely get first blood. I also decide I want the wraiths to engage my talos, as although I doubt the talos will win, I’m confident they will hold the wraiths up for a few turns. The talos move out, forgo shooting, and manage to charge the Tomb Blade (ignore cover makes their charges reasonably reliable and they only had to roll 6 or higher). The Tomb Blades are wiped out giving me First Blood.

NE VPs: 2
DE VPs: 1

Turn 2 (NE):


Tactical Objectives: Big Game Hunter (kill a MC), Overwhelming Firepower (kill a unit in your shooting phase) and Dust And Ashes (score 1 VP if your nominated character survives).

My opponent draws 3 cards for the three objective markers he controls. The necrons shuffle forward making sure they still control the three objective markers. The after generating another scarab base the spyder moves forward to make sure it can still buff the wraiths. The scarabs spread out to bubble wrap the spyder. The wraiths charge the talos, the talos take 2 wounds the wraiths take 1. Bother are fearless so remain locked in combat. My opponent discards the overwhelming firepower tactical objective as it’s unlikely to be scored against my a resilient army of large units.

NE VPs: 2
DE VPs: 1

Turn 2 (DE):


Tactical Objectives: Blood and Guts (D3 VP kill three or more units in assault)

Both my units of grotesque materialise out of the web way on either flank of the necron force. They use their run move to spread out to envelope the necron force and contest all three objective markers (deepstrike placement can be arranged so that the unit is about 8” in length, add a run roll of 3” in each direction and you can have a 14” chain. Roll a 6 for your run and the chain can be 20” long!!). This prevents your opponent from escaping and also helps spread the damage from shooting across multiple grotesques. The wraiths fail to hurt the talos, and the talos inflict another wound on the wraiths (as my talos are only inflicting one wound per initiative step my opponent can spread the wounds across the wraiths).

NE VPs: 2
DE VPs: 1

Turn 3 (NE):


Tactical Objectives: Big Game Hunter (kill a MC) and Dust And Ashes (score 1 VP if your nominated character survives).

As all the objective markers were contested my opponent couldn’t draw any tactical objectives (Decurion Detachment does not have objective secure). The scarab swarm rearranged to block the grotesques on the right. The warriors in the left ghost ark disembarked to block the grotesques on the left, keeping both ghost arks (one still full of warriors) safe from a potential charge from the grotesques. The immortals spread out to bubble wrap the spyder as best they could. Everything fired into the grotesque squad on the left, killing three and wounding a few more. The two gauss flayer arrays that were pointing in the other direction snap fired into the grotesques on the right to no effect. The wraiths and talos did another wound to each other.

NE VPs: 2
DE VPs: 1

Turn 3 (DE):


Tactical Objectives: Blood and Guts (D3 VP kill three or more units in assault)

The Grotesques spread out further and got as close to the necron force as possible. With the grotesques on the extremes trying to wrap around the necrom blockers.

The Grotesques on the left declare a multiple charge against the warriors, immortals and the spyder with the immortals as the primary target. Overwatch causes a wound one of the grotesques makes it into base contact with the spyder. The Grotesques on the right declare a multiple charge against the scarabs and the spyder with the scarabs as the primary target. One grotesque makes it into base contact with the spider, a second grotesque will be able to pile into the spider at his initiative step.

The aberration issues a challenge, which the overlord accepts. The necrons all strike first as the grotesques charged through cover. The scarabs kill a grotesque. The spyder fails to do anything. The necron lord wounds the aberration. The warriors and the immortals wound a grotesque. In return the grotesques kill all but one scarab base and the spyder dies to a lucky flesh gauntlet strike. The grotesques on the other side, kill two necron warriors and an immortal (the overlord activated his resurrection orb). Combat score is 5 to 24, the necrons test moral at -25 (thanks to freakish spectacle). Both the immortals and the warriors break. The scarabs hold the unit of grotesques on the right due to fearless. Thankfully the spyder is dead so there are no fearless units preventing the grotesques on the left from sweeping. The warrior, immortals and overlord are caught in the sweeping advance. With 4 enemy units completely destroyed during the assault phase 3VP are scored on the Blood and Guts Tactical Objective. The necron warlord has also been slain. The wraiths kill a talos and take a wound in return.

NE VPs: 2
DE VPs: 5

Turn 4 (NE):


Tactical Objectives: Big Game Hunter (kill a MC)
The barges shuffle back firing into the grotesques killing two. The empty barge blocking the advance of the grotesques and contesting objectives 1 and 2. The wraiths kill the last talos and score the big game hunter tactical objective.

NE VPs: 3
DE VPs: 5


Turn 4 (DE):


Tactical Objectives: Supremacy (score D3 VP if you control two objectives and at least twice as many as your opponent).

Both Grotesques squads move to envelop the two ghost arks. They make the charge and manage to use their pile in move to get a complete surround on the ghost ark full of warriors. Both ghost arks are wrecked and the passengers are destroyed as they can’t disembark. The Supremacy tactical objective is scored as the Covenites control two objectives to the necron’s one, scoring 2VP.

NE VPs: 3
DE VPs: 7

Turn 5 (NE):


Tactical Objectives: King Slayer (D3 for killing the enemy warlord)

The wraiths move out in an attempt to hunt down the Covenite Warlord.

NE VPs: 3
DE VPs: 7

Turn 5 (DE):


Tactical Objectives: Secure Objective 2 and 3

The grotesques move out to secure the two newly drawn tactical objectives, netting the Covenite force another 2VP.

NE VPs: 3
DE VPs: 9

Turn 6 (NE):


Tactical Objectives: King Slayer (D3 for killing the enemy warlord)
The wraiths charge the grotesque unit containing the warlord. They kill a grotesques, but two wraiths die in return (zealot ensured the groteques fight back hard).

NE VPs: 3
DE VPs: 9

Turn 6 (DE):


Tactical Objectives: Pain in all it’s forms (1 VP for killing a unit in the shooting or assault phase)

The second grotesque squad joins the fight and the remaining wraiths are slaughters scoring the tactical objective drawn this turn. The necrons are no more. Covenite Victory!

NE VPs: 3
DE VPs: 10

Hope you enjoyed the report.

For more reports checkout #TheRepugnantRamblers

Wow. Without any transports, I never would have expected the Grots to do so well against a couple of pretty mobile units, especially coupled with the resilience the new Necrons have.

Would I be correct in assuming that after the Black Buzzards, this will be another series of battles where one army list entry will be taken to its extremes?

This was amazing. Thank you, Mush, for writing this up. I haven't played the new Necrons yet but I've had a hunch that Coven assault units are probably our best tool for dealing with them as locking them up in combat with Fearless, relatively resilient Coven units greatly reduces most of the army's damage output. Great read and great tactics displayed in your victory.

DingK wrote:

Wow. Without any transports, I never would have expected the Grots to do so well against a couple of pretty mobile units, especially coupled with the resilience the new Necrons have.

Yeah it's amazing how a large footprint and careful positioning can strip away the mobility advantage of a faster army. I'm loving these huge grotesque units!

DingK wrote:

Would I be correct in assuming that after the Black Buzzards, this will be another series of battles where one army list entry will be taken to its extremes?

Most likely. The Covenite Cotery doesn't have many options to choose from, that being said the list is still in it's infancy and has a few weaknesses: imperial knights, walkers, S10 pie plates and force weapons to name a few. So In that regard I'm not sure how it will develop. The idea was to build an elite Dark Eldar army with no transports that could fit in a shoe box (for traveling and tournaments). The play style is partly inspired by my grey knights, grey knight terminatiors => Grotesques, dread knights => Talos, nemesis strike formation => web way portals.

sweetbacon wrote:

This was amazing.  Thank you, Mush, for writing this up.  I haven't played the new Necrons yet but I've had a hunch that Coven assault units are probably our best tool for dealing with them as locking them up in combat with Fearless, relatively resilient Coven units greatly reduces most of the army's damage output.  Great read and great tactics displayed in your victory.  

Thanks. Coven are pretty sweat against Necrons. Also the pressure 20 grotesques landing without scatter puts on your opponent is immense.

Mushkilla wrote:

Most likely. The Covenite Cotery doesn't have many options to choose from, that being said the list is still in it's infancy and has a few weaknesses: imperial knights, walkers, S10 pie plates and force weapons to name a few. So In that regard I'm not sure how it will develop. The idea was to build an elite Dark Eldar army with no transports that could fit in a shoe box (for traveling and tournaments). The play style is partly inspired by my grey knights, grey knight terminatiors => Grotesques, dread knights => Talos, nemesis strike formation => web way portals.

Hmm, I like your thinking. Are you set on your point limit? I ask, because adding three Taloi to build a Corpsethief Claw formation could lead nicely into 1750, and would also mitigate some of the weaknesses. Get some heatlances or HWB in there to deal with armor you don't want to handle in CC.

DingK wrote:

Hmm, I like your thinking. Are you set on your point limit? I ask, because adding three Taloi to build a Corpsethief Claw formation could lead nicely into 1750, and would also mitigate some of the weaknesses. Get some heatlances or HWB in there to deal with armor you don't want to handle in CC.

Yup, Talos and corpsethief is something I want to explore. My 1500pt list will have two squads of two talos, so trying to sneak in a fifth and going with corpse thief is definitely on my list of things to experiment with.

At this initial stage I'm just working with the core of the army to get a better feel for the play style. I love assault despite the current edition being very shooty. Multiple assaults and multi-combats are something I really enjoy trying to pull off, and tie in nicely with the idea of haemonculus trying to orchestrate a symphony of destruction.

It's not enough to win, I need to destroy my opponents whole army in a magnificent symphaony of multiple combat!

Another great batrep, Mush. Makes me want to load up on grots (if only they had a plastic kit).

I'm a little surprised by the Tomb Blade unit though. From what I've seen, Necron players are looking to field units of 10 with the upgrades to give them ignore cover blasts. I'm guessing your opponent needed to fill out the formation/points?

Erebus wrote:

I'm a little surprised by the Tomb Blade unit though. From what I've seen, Necron players are looking to field units of 10 with the upgrades to give them ignore cover blasts. I'm guessing your opponent needed to fill out the formation/points?

At this point level it's tricky. Ideally you want nebuloscopes, shield vanes, particle beamers and a larger unit like you said. But they get really expensive then. Bare bones tomb blades are still a pretty good fast objective scorer/line breaker/blocker/screener and are a requirement for the detachment. So they are still a decent unit but fill a different roll to the larger squads you often see people take. At the end of the day Necrons can't bring all their toys, and have to make choices.

Something else I noticed is having wraiths/spiders/scarabs mean the necron player has a fair bit of points tied up in units that can't shoot, making their shooting middling at best.

Great battle report! Very inspiring

I've missed your battle reports. And this... this is magnificent.

Someone's missing a square bracket round about turn 5... tsk tsk Mush

Nice batrep. I take it you chose to just use 4 maelstrom objectives on account of it being a 4x4 board?
Also, this is the maelstrom mission I find hardest for my Dark Eldar on account of DE being generally poop at holding objectives, and it requires you to be holding objectives at the start of your turn (read: having survived an opponents turn/not being contested) in order to generate play. Did you have a plan to mitigate this (admittedly, slightly easier with coven units being sturdier), or were you going for the wipeout?

Panic_Puppet wrote:

Someone's missing a square bracket round about turn 5... tsk tsk Mush

Oh, it's there. It just decided to wander a little.

I'm curious about your thoughts on your take on larger games. Larger in the sense of a larger table. 4x4 is after all not really the default table size for 40k. I feel your army would struggle more on a 6x4 table, due to lack of mobility in spite of having that huge footprint that helped you so much in this game.

Still, awesome report, when I read that Necron list I thought you were pretty much done for from the get go. Really nicely played. Congratulations.

Wow I can't wait to read more of these. I hope it shows off just how impressive grots can be, there always MVP for me (killed a blind axe jugger Lord last game >< ).

Always wanted to try a full coven list too but the lack of AT puts me off... I strongly recommend changing one Talos to a cronos for the dark artisan formation, when your using that many grots it's a shame not to have a 4+fnp and that would let you take the grots and haeme as the grotesquerie which is a MASSIVE boon +1T or any of the results from their table are brilliant, and it would all cost the same points roughly

Great stuff, hope to see more. Very interesting list. With the amount of units I would have thought you were playing Grey Knights!

Calyptra wrote:

I've missed your battle reports. And this... this is magnificent.

Thanks for the kind words!

It has been a while, the problem is they take so long to write up/and draw with diagrams (from the blurry camera phone pictures). Maelstrom has also meant I need to take even more notes!

Don't expect the same frequency as the Black Buzzard reports, but I'll try to put up a report with this army now and then.

To be honest I haven't been playing that much Dark Eldar this edition (partly because I sold a lot of my army a year ago). I was having a stint with my grey knights and realised I could make a more fun/reliable version of my grey knights with a Covenite Coterie, and still have a shoe box army.

GK strategy risks/uncertainty
-reserve rolls <- can roll for reserves turn 1
-deep strike mishap
-deep strike scatter
-psychic powers
-run distance
-leadership/pinning
-charge distance

Coven strategy risks/uncertainty
-reserve rolls <- delays are compensated by power from pain
-run distance <- massively reduced by accurate deepstrike and not having any guns
-charge distance <- massively reduced by accurate deepstrike and unit size

Fearless, Power From Pain, no dependance on the psychic phase, and web way portals make the conven list a lot more reliable. Not having any guns also forces you to stick to the plan, I have lost so many games where I shot at things with my terminators when I should have been running/or forgoing shooting to guarantee the charge. More importantly I get to go back to my Dark Eldar.

Panic_Puppet wrote:

Someone's missing a square bracket round about turn 5... tsk tsk Mush

I'm out of practice, fixed.  

Panic_Puppet wrote:

Nice batrep. I take it you chose to just use 4 maelstrom objectives on account of it being a 4x4 board?

Yup, and just discard and redraw if you pull an objective 5-6 card, works pretty well in my experience.

Panic_Puppet wrote:

Also, this is the maelstrom mission I find hardest for my Dark Eldar on account of DE being generally poop at holding objectives, and it requires you to be holding objectives at the start of your turn (read: having survived an opponents turn/not being contested) in order to generate play. Did you have a plan to mitigate this (admittedly, slightly easier with coven units being sturdier), or were you going for the wipeout?

It's very different with a Covenite army, I draw a lot from my Nurgle Daemons/Grey Knight experience. With a slow Covenite force the trick is to establish what I affectionately like to call "The Mark of Nurgle" during the Objective placement game.



In the mark of nurgle each objective is a 6" move away from being scored (because of the 3" bubbles), less when you take into account unit size. This a very powerful concept in maelstrom missions as it allows a single unit to rotate between 50% of the objective markers (in a 6 objective game). It also makes it a very alluring part of the board for a player to want to secure (hence the necrons bunching up on it). This ties in well with the huge strategic mobility (deepstrike) and terrible tactical mobility (6" move) that the covenite army has. Also deepstrike heavy armies don't care where The Mark is made.

So in answer to your question, my plan was to break his army, and then catch up on tactical objectives. So not necessarily go for the wipe out, but cripple him enough that I can control The Mark. Of course late reserves can complicate this strategy so it's by no means bullet proof.

Dogmar wrote:

I'm curious about your thoughts on your take on larger games. Larger in the sense of a larger table. 4x4 is after all not really the default table size for 40k. I feel your army would struggle more on a 6x4 table, due to lack of mobility in spite of having that huge footprint that helped you so much in this game.

In this game you could add another 2' to the table and it wouldn't have changed anything, hell my opponent only unused 3' of the 4' he had. The trick with slow armies and any table is to convince your opponent to use as little of it as possible, whether it's through grouping objective, null deployment/deepstrikers encouraging castling or blocking with a large footprint.

But you are right a more dispersed army on a larger board would be harder for this covenite list to deal with. The next games will definitely hope to explore this.

kuzzuk wrote:

I strongly recommend changing one Talos to a cronos for the dark artisan formation, when your using that many grots it's a shame not to have a 4+fnp and that would let you take the grots and haeme as the grotesquerie which is a MASSIVE boon +1T or any of the results from their table are brilliant, and it would all cost the same points roughly

My problem with the grotesquery formation is I want all my grotesques to come on from reserve and the Grotesquery only lets me take one haemonculus. I guess I could have some MSU Grot units that start on the board? Interesting.

I will definitely explore cronos though, and maybe Dark Artisan.

Great battle report - nice to see a pure Coven army (and an unusual one, at that) do so well.

If you're going for a GK-esque feel, then Dark Artisan might work well in mimicking a teleporting Dreadknight.

I do have a couple of questions:

1) Is there a reason you put the Talos together, instead of taking two squads of 1 Talos?

2) If you were to run this list again, is there anything you'd change?

Man, this read like a great action thriller. Nice job.

Love the Battle Report and glad to get to see some results against Necron forces! I've been hoping to see how Grotesque fair against Wraiths and Lychguard in particular so I much appreciate the data you've provided.

Did you know you were fighting Necron when you made your list? If it was a TAC setup, I'd love to hear what your strat was for fighting flyer heavy armies (Flyrants or Nightscythes for example) or fast mobile ones like Eldar.

The Shredder wrote:

I do have a couple of questions:

1) Is there a reason you put the Talos together, instead of taking two squads of 1 Talos?

2) If you were to run this list again, is there anything you'd change?

The Talos were together because I wanted to use them as a tarpit/anchor. Running them as a single unit let's me rotate the leader for wound allocation and allocate wounds to a different Talos each initiative step. It makes first blood more unlikely too. You can also leverage cover really well (only the closest Talos needs to be in cover. Its also great for multi charging. But I'll explore solo units as well in other games to see what works best.

I will be running it again as I'm planning on making this my main DE army. Changes? Not sure, the artefacts were just point filler, maybe haywire on the Talos? Still I'm a big fan on splinter cannons against FMC.

lessthanjeff wrote:

Did you know you were fighting Necron when you made your list?  If it was a TAC setup, I'd love to hear what your strat was for fighting flyer heavy armies (Flyrants or Nightscythes for example) or fast mobile ones like Eldar.

Nope the list isn't tailored for necrons, its my new TAC list. Of course there are a few rough match ups that I'll need to learn to play (imperial knights, grey knights, venom spam to name a few). Flyer armies I'm not worried about, as I have loads of experience against them with my no shooting nurgle daemon army. Basically play the mission, dig in on objectives, and use large footprints to force them to fly off the board. WWP and pin point deep strike might even help me crash a few.

My thoughts, from the necron perspective:

In turn 2, knowing you can Deep Strike, I see no reason why he did not scatter to the corners.  You had no significant firepower on the table and the Necrons could go anywhere they wanted.  they should have scattered into three corners.  Wraiths Behind the trees( terrain #5), Ark Behind terrain piece 4 on the left and the other ark behind terrain piece 4 on the right.  The Spyder and Scarabs could have gone any way they wanted but probably straight south makes the most sense.

What that would have done is created an empty box in the middle for the Grotesques to land in, but it's really a killing field.  They will beset your Scarabs in the following round but by then the Scarabs are yet that much further south.

The idea would be to isolate them and essentially make them choose a direction they want to go in but no direction is a good choice because the further they go south to chase the Scarabs, the more shots you are going to get into them from the three other angles.  and because the objectives are in the middle, moving too far afield will mean they cant get back to objectives in time.  So I might have strongly suggested BOXING them.

Now if they don’t land in the box but instead go towards disparate corners, the Necrons would simply move away for a round and then the DS'd Grotesques are playing a running game, with guns plowing them every turn as the enemy simply plays keep away.  The necron endgame is to keep just enough speed alive to take objectives as needed but to whittle the  enemy until then.  the Scarabs unfortunately are no match for the Grotesques and their movement is more important than their damage.  Best target is just to keep going south and accept their fate as necessary for getting the mean bad guys to follow them.  Maybe eat a Talos or something.

On turn 4, I notice a mistake.  There should have been an emergency disembark possible for the folks in the Ark.  I think when forced to dieembark the exit point ceases to matter and it can be anywhere within 3", which includes inside it.  so some of those should have survived in the shadow of that Ark.  I'll have to look but I am pretty sure emergency disembark says "anywhere within 3".  Let me know if you look it up and what page that's on before I do.

Thanks for the detailed breakdown unorthodoxy!

Unorthodoxy wrote:

In turn 2, knowing you can Deep Strike, I see no reason why he did not scatter to the corners.  You had no significant firepower on the table and the Necrons could go anywhere they wanted.  they should have scattered into three corners.  Wraiths Behind the trees( terrain #5), Ark Behind terrain piece 4 on the left and the other ark behind terrain piece 4 on the right.  The Spyder and Scarabs could have gone any way they wanted but probably straight south makes the most sense.

What that would have done is created an empty box in the middle for the Grotesques to land in, but it's really a killing field.  They will beset your Scarabs in the following round but by then the Scarabs are yet that much further south.

Something like this? On turn 1-2?

Unorthodoxy wrote:

On turn 4, I notice a mistake.  There should have been an emergency disembark possible for the folks in the Ark.  I think when forced to dieembark the exit point ceases to matter and it can be anywhere within 3", which includes inside it.  so some of those should have survived in the shadow of that Ark.  I'll have to look but I am pretty sure emergency disembark says "anywhere within 3".  Let me know if you look it up and what page that's on before I do.

It wasn't a mistake. You cannot place models on top of a vehicle. The vehicle only becomes a Wreck after the passengers disembark (see Effects of Damage on Passengers).

In addition emergency disembarking just means a model can be placed anywhere in contact with the vehicle’s hull and can then move as for a normal disembarkation. Emergency disembarks due to a vehicle being wrecked have the additional restriction of the model only being able to move 3" for its disembark (see Emergency Disembarkation).

Can't give you page numbers as I only have the epub version on the codex to hand.

This article covers it in more detail If your interested in blocking tactics.

Mushkilla wrote:

The Talos were together because I wanted to use them as a tarpit/anchor. Running them as a single unit let's me rotate the leader for wound allocation and allocate wounds to a different Talos each initiative step. It makes first blood more unlikely too. You can also leverage cover really well (only the closest Talos needs to be in cover. Its also great for multi charging. But I'll explore solo units as well in other games to see what works best.

Fair enough.

Mushkilla wrote:

I will be running it again as I'm planning on making this my main DE army. Changes? Not sure, the artefacts were just point filler, maybe haywire on the Talos? Still I'm a big fan on splinter cannons against FMC.

With regard to the artefacts, I can understand the Panacea but the Haemovores were an unusual choice. I'd have thought the Vexator mask would be a better choice for trying to kill I4+ characters or MCs before they got to swing.

I hadn't thought of the SCs as being anti-FMC. Makes sense.

Personally, I'd want some long-range anti-tank. However, I don't think you can really get that in a coven list unless you're running Corpsethief. I'd probably just stick with the Splinter Cannons (2 Haywire shots seem unlikely to do much).

Though, on that note, I'll be interested to see how you handle a mechanised list with so few units and melee as your only anti-tank.

Mushkilla wrote:

Nope the list isn't tailored for necrons, its my new TAC list. Of course there are a few rough match ups that I'll need to learn to play (imperial knights, grey knights, venom spam to name a few).

Well, with GKs, you might have a crack at mutually-assured destruction.

More seriously though, if you find any coven tactics for dealing with GKs I'd really love to hear them. As it stands, our local GK player is the reason I field very few (if any) coven units.

The Shredder wrote:

I'd have thought the Vexator mask would be a better choice for trying to kill I4+ characters or MCs before they got to swing.

That not a bad shout, handy against dreadknights and nurgle bale sword daemon princes. Shame it’s an artefact or I would take one on each haemonculus just for that.

The Shredder wrote:

Personally, I'd want some long-range anti-tank. However, I don't think you can really get that in a coven list unless you're running Corpsethief. I'd probably just stick with the Splinter Cannons (2 Haywire shots seem unlikely to do much).

I'm actually considering heatlances on the Talos, cheaper and potent. Without needing to subscribe to numbers like haywire blasters. Splinter cannons don't bring that much to the table in a list with no other shooting, where as the heatlances help aliviate some of the lists weaknesses. Sure splinter cannons come in handy against FMC spam but they are not crucial in that match up in my opinion. Having no shooting also has this weird effect of making your opponent stay out of terrain, which is handy when you don’t have assault grenades.

The Shredder wrote:

Though, on that note, I'll be interested to see how you handle a mechanised list with so few units and melee as your only anti-tank.

I’m hopping large footprint, objective placement and good positioning will be effective enough for most mechanised armies. Walkers are a separate issue.

The Shredder wrote:

More seriously though, if you find any coven tactics for dealing with GKs I'd really love to hear them. As it stands, our local GK player is the reason I field very few (if any) coven units.

I do have a few tricks for taking on grey knight force weapons (as one of my other armies), I’ll write up a Pragmatic Realspace Raider guide on it, when I find the time (got a few other articles in the pipe line before that though).

Mushkilla wrote:

That not a bad shout, handy against dreadknights and nurgle bale sword daemon princes. Shame it’s an artefact or I would take one on each haemonculus just for that.

It is a pity.

But, since you can only take one, who would you give it to - your Warlord or your secondary Haemonculus?

Mushkilla wrote:

I'm actually considering heatlances on the Talos, cheaper and potent. Without needing to subscribe to numbers like haywire blasters.

Well, I hope you have better luck with it than me.

Mushkilla wrote:

Splinter cannons don't bring that much to the table in a list with no other shooting, where as the heatlances help aliviate some of the lists weaknesses. Sure splinter cannons come in handy against FMC spam but they are not crucial in that match up in my opinion. Having no shooting also has this weird effect of making your opponent stay out of terrain, which is handy when you don’t have assault grenades.

Interesting point.

Also, something of an aside, but I wish our Haemonculi had better shooting options.

Mushkilla wrote:

I’m hopping large footprint, objective placement and good positioning will be effective enough for most mechanised armies. Walkers are a separate issue.

Sorry, but how does a large footprint help you?

Mushkilla wrote:

I do have a few tricks for taking on grey knight force weapons (as one of my other armies), I’ll write up a Pragmatic Realspace Raider guide on it, when I find the time (got a few other articles in the pipe line before that though).

I look forward to reading it.