How have you used the Medusae?

I always talk about proxying some medusae in a game but never do. They look good on paper, I just havnt uaed them yet. I figured there probably plenty of fellow Archons here that have used them. Just curious on how exactly? Here are some topic ideas:

Are they standard in your army? How many do you run? Do you run them without any other court members or do you sprinkle them in with the other bodyguards? Do you start them on the board or do you deepstrike them? and if so do you use a webway portal?

They absolutely have to deepstrike with a webway portal in my opinion. Start them on the board and they will get killed before they're in range.

I think the optimum size is 4 in a venom with a wwp archon (mainly to make them a free choice). Position them correctly and against the right target and they will wipe it out (bar horrdenous dice rolling). The reason I don't start them on the board is twofold - 1. Their ideal target is the space marine equivalent - which often come with drop pods full of guys with flamers, who will happily melt the medusae into oblivion if they get the chance, and 2. they're expensive so need to have an impact. Deploying them on turn 1 means they're highly likely to have taken damage by the time they get to shoot (bear in mind they can't snap fire) and they're quite fragile.

I wouldn't say they're an auto include because against genuine hordes they're expensive and they are also useless against 2+ armour for elite armies, but they're definitely a viable choice if your meta is marine heavy (just don't base a whole strategy around them).

Is it better to run the webway with an archon or a haemy with a liquefier?

I like archons, mainly because that gives you a spare hq slot for elsewhere. If you take the court and a Hamid, you have no more hq slots

I have been trying out 3 medusae, 5 Lhamie-lovelies, 4 sslyth in my Tantalus and run it with a 5 man warrior unit in a venom..

They hang together,venom screens the tantalus(closest target) and hopefully at some point they bail out to assault... have the warriors charge first,take overwatch,then the court goes in... so far when I can get it done it has worked pretty good... and I have the crap dice rolls....

once or twice I lucked out and got the Archon and 4 incubi in the fray also..... chewed through about 30 orks then my dice switched sides and .......well it was not pretty but the whole lot at least killed its equal points cost....

If done right,court is soooooo much nastier than wyches... I am thinking of running 2 archons just so I can have 2 courts ... 1 more shooty and 1 cc mayhem..... think of what 10-16 sslyth can do with shard carbines in a raider with splinter racks--- pricey but would be neat to unleash once...

CC?- maybe 11 Lhamies, 4 medusae, archon in a Tantalus.... ouch..

I really like the court... can be brutal but fragile and cost is not tooo bad....

Oh and my tantalus has been surviving pretty well.... Reaper has mostly survived and proven itself 75% of the time(need to add shock Prow so I can ram when they take out the Haywire death ray)

I'm planing on an Archon (or Lhamaean) with one Medusae and three Sslyth in a Venom.
Maybe five more Medusae in another Venom later.

Can't speak from experience how well they work, since I don't have the models yet.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

They absolutely have to deepstrike with a webway portal in my opinion. Start them on the board and they will get killed before they're in range.

I think the optimum size is 4 in a venom with a wwp archon (mainly to make them a free choice). Position them correctly and against the right target and they will wipe it out (bar horrdenous dice rolling). The reason I don't start them on the board is twofold - 1. Their ideal target is the space marine equivalent - which often come with drop pods full of guys with flamers, who will happily melt the medusae into oblivion if they get the chance, and 2. they're expensive so need to have an impact. Deploying them on turn 1 means they're highly likely to have taken damage by the time they get to shoot (bear in mind they can't snap fire) and they're quite fragile.

I keep meaning to try a squad along these lines.

One question though - wouldn't a Raider be better?

I mean, their firepower seems more important than that of the vehicle, so wouldn't you prefer a cheaper Raider - which can jink (with little penalty) and has an extra hull point?

The Raider would make more sense BUT in GW's 'infinite wisdom' or lack there of, made the stupid decision to make the only dedicated transport available to our Archon the Venom... essentially neutering ANY chance of him/her deep striking with any kind of numbers in a retinue .... You CAN have the Archon join a court unit in a Raider BUT it has to happen on the first turn which means no deep striking period....  NOW MAYBE you can deploy a Succubus with a WWP and a Court in a Raider and deep strike that since both the Court AND the Succubus have the Raider dedicated transport option...

I have not investigated the option of deploying the Tantalus as a DS-ing heavy support filled with possibly a WWP Succubus and a Court..... It IS classified as- a Dedicated Transport for the court, -a Heavy Support choice for the army AND as an Open Topped HS fast skimmer 'tank' WITH transport capability...

So I think it is feasible to field a Tantalus as a Heavy transporting a Court AND a Succubus via a WWP....  but i need to read  up.... sometimes even the basic rules concerning transports in general are becoming clear as mud....

Archon Rievect wrote:

The Raider would make more sense BUT in GW's 'infinite wisdom' or lack there of, made the stupid decision to make the only dedicated transport available to our Archon the Venom... essentially neutering ANY chance of him/her deep striking with any kind of numbers in a retinue .... You CAN have the Archon join a court unit in a Raider BUT it has to happen on the first turn which means no deep striking period....  NOW MAYBE you can deploy a Succubus with a WWP and a Court in a Raider and deep strike that since both the Court AND the Succubus have the Raider dedicated transport option...

Sorry, but I don't understand.

Why can't I buy a Court of the Archon, buy a Raider for said court, and then attach the Archon to the Court in the Raider prior to deployment?

The Shredder wrote:

Archon Rievect wrote:

The Raider would make more sense BUT in GW's 'infinite wisdom' or lack there of, made the stupid decision to make the only dedicated transport available to our Archon the Venom... essentially neutering ANY chance of him/her deep striking with any kind of numbers in a retinue .... You CAN have the Archon join a court unit in a Raider BUT it has to happen on the first turn which means no deep striking period....  NOW MAYBE you can deploy a Succubus with a WWP and a Court in a Raider and deep strike that since both the Court AND the Succubus have the Raider dedicated transport option...

Sorry, but I don't understand.

Why can't I buy a Court of the Archon, buy a Raider for said court, and then attach the Archon to the Court in the Raider prior to deployment?

You can, of course. But that'll be a HQ choice and a fast attack choice on top.

Rokuro wrote:

The Shredder wrote:

Archon Rievect wrote:

The Raider would make more sense BUT in GW's 'infinite wisdom' or lack there of, made the stupid decision to make the only dedicated transport available to our Archon the Venom... essentially neutering ANY chance of him/her deep striking with any kind of numbers in a retinue .... You CAN have the Archon join a court unit in a Raider BUT it has to happen on the first turn which means no deep striking period....  NOW MAYBE you can deploy a Succubus with a WWP and a Court in a Raider and deep strike that since both the Court AND the Succubus have the Raider dedicated transport option...

Sorry, but I don't understand.

Why can't I buy a Court of the Archon, buy a Raider for said court, and then attach the Archon to the Court in the Raider prior to deployment?

You can, of course. But that'll be a HQ choice and a fast attack choice on top.

I don't understand this. If I'm already taking an Archon, then the Court doesn't use a HQ slot. And, where on earth is the FA slot coming from? Courts can take a Raider as a dedicated transport.

The Shredder wrote:

Rokuro wrote:

You can, of course. But that'll be a HQ choice and a fast attack choice on top.

I don't understand this. If I'm already taking an Archon, then the Court doesn't use a HQ slot. And, where on earth is the FA slot coming from? Courts can take a Raider as a dedicated transport.

Scratch that. I had a brainfart there and just realized it.
Just like Archon Rievect, I only paid attention to what the Archon himself can take.

I tried a unit of 1 WWP Blasterchon + 2 medusae in venom twice.

We call it the Webway-"Remove-entire-MEQ-unit-of-choice-just-like-that"-bomb now, 'cause that's what it does.

MacroA, all you used was 2 Medusae in a venom deepstriking via webway portal? And that removed an entire Mech unit? Glad to hear that 2 is all it takes!

It makes sense. if you can cover an entire unit with the template, each template will kill half it's targets on average.

I think I'd still prefer 4 though. It makes wiping out a squad far more certain, and makes them more deadly to targets like bikes. Plus, with 4 S4 templates, you should be able to put enough wounds on a squad to damage even 2+ save units (in case your opponent doesn't have any 'ideal' targets for you to hit).

My favorite is putting them down behind a trukk-full of burna boys and toast them. It may not be the optimal target in an Ork army, but the irony is simply too sweet to ignore

4 is the more 'take all comers' option, because it not only deals comfortably with a full meq unit, it will also do substantial damage to horde units

Maybe I did not clearly explain in my previous post,of it was a bit muddled, my apologies...

I have done a little reading today and I THINK if you want to run a big Court unit and WWP it you CAN do the following-

1-take an Archon and do whatever you want because if you want more than 4 members in the Court,he is irrelevant to the Court...
2-Take the Court -9- in a Raider
3-Take a Succubus w/WWP as the 2nd HQ and place her in the Raider with the 9 Court(your choice of flavor)
4 Deploy the Raider WWP DS style with the Succubus/Court unit and have some fun..

I have found NO wording that says you CANNOT have the Succubus join the Court unit....she just 'joins a unit' like any other IC and the court does not have an IC.. it is just a unit...WHICH if you are issued a challenge, works to your benefit... the whole unit still gets to whack away at the opponent unit and or IC.....

Something to remember when deepstriking medusae without a transport you will at most be able to fire 3 templates, maybe 4 (if you deploy the archon in the centre). This is because deepstrike packs the models so tight and templates may not be placed so that they touch friendly models including the ones from your own unit. One of the reasons I never bother with liquifiers on grotesques.

40k rule book wrote:

...place the template so that its narrow end is touching the base of the firing model and the rest of the template covers as many models in the target unit as possible, without touching any other friendly models (including other models from the firing model’s unit).

On the other hand when firing from a transport you can fire as many as you want (as they are all measured from any point on the hull). So it worth taking that into consideration.

The other aspect is that, with a transport, the templates can issue from anywhere along its hull - so you can simply find the place that yields the most hits and fire all templates from there. Whereas, a unit of Medusae not in a transport have to fire them from the models - which may yield slightly fewer hits in some cases (and, as above, most of the time you won't be able to fire more than 3).

Also, I'd want them in a transport simply because it gives them protection and mobility after their initial attack.