20 kabalites WWP

I saw a lot of venom spam and gunboat build in this forum, but I wondered if using a full 20 kabalite squad with 2 lances deepstriked with a WWP haemy in some cover, near the ennemy, or behind his lines would be worthy.

It's around 300pts a squad, but 36 poison shots plus 2 lances can hurt. If you manage to put them in cover, they should hold on a few turn. Plus, with 20 models, should be used to tarpit the opponent.

If the ennemy doesn't assault you, it's 2 lances that cover his side of the field, while the rest of the army push foward.

I thought that 2 full squads make some damage, for 600 pts, backed with a dark artisan, or something.

What do you think?
(I thought dark lances, because I hope for cover. Then, they shouldn't be moving. And the first turn they arrive, I don't think I'll shoot at tank.)

Spending so much on a squad like that I wouldnt use Dark Lances. Splinter Cannons are better against Infantry than Lances and if you want to shoot at Armor you're wasting 144 points of poisoned splinter shots that could be aimed at infantry.

P.S.
I have a list up in the Army List section of the forum that features this build with some discussion pertaining to it if you want to check it out.

I do it, but use Splinter Cannons rather than Dark Lances. (I do give the Archon a Blaster, though.)

Works awesome the few times I've tried it.

36 poison shots for 300 points.

3 Venoms give you 36 poison shots that can be on the table turn 1 and move 12" a turn. They also cost 195 points.

Your suggestion might work, but it's woefully inefficient.

To my mind, it's an ok strategy, but nothing more than that. T3 5+ doesn't take much to shift and as Hellstrom pointed out, that's a lot of points to spend on something we can get much cheaper elsewhere (plus, if you roll morale tests like i do then they ain't hanging around for long either).

Also, you really don't want to get this unit charged, it's likely to get brutalised by most things (think tactical marine squad charging it, same number of attacks as you but they wound you on 3's and you get a 5+ save, you wound them on 5's and they get a 3+ save).

Hellstrom wrote:

36 poison shots for 300 points.

3 Venoms give you 36 poison shots that can be on the table turn 1 and move 12" a turn.  They also cost 195 points.

Your suggestion might work, but it's woefully inefficient.

Pretty hard to compare the two.  A single shot won't eliminate a third of the warriors, the Venoms don't have Objective Secured by themselves, can't benefit from FNP, can't benefit from most blessings, etc.  Comparing vehicles to is always tricky, but there's so many factors in play here that I don't think it's accurate to look at points per shot and try to make a judgement based solely on that.

Also, with 20 warriors, 2 cannons, and an archon with portal/blaster, you're getting 42 poisoned shots on the Deep Strike plus the blaster, and up to 48-and-1 on subsequent turns, for 300 points.

Jimsolo wrote:

Pretty hard to compare the two.  A single shot won't eliminate a third of the warriors

Given that the proposed tactic is to deep strike via a WWP then a single shot can very easily take out 10 or more tightly packed warriors. Riptides with EWO will be rubbing their giant mechanical hands with glee at the thought of this tactic being used, as will anything capable of lobbing pie plates around unless the warriors don't shoot and use their run move to spread out a bit.

EDIT- Found this pic which shows that in fact, over 30 warriors would fit under a pie plate!

Doesn't even need to be riptides though - even a 65pt whirlwind would have a field day against this!

I wasn't referring to Blasts, but a solitary, one shot attack, like a lascannon. But granted, I should have clarified.

Still, regarding blasts: if you're using this tactic, why would you deploy them where they can get hit by such weapons? That's not a flaw in the unit choice (although it's certainly a cautionary point), that would be user error.

The point was to drop them in cover. So, a single blast shot shouldn't wipe them totally. Unless the blast is also "ignore cover" (damn it, imperial scums!). And I don't care about morale, because they are fearless, because of the coven haemy. (why dont take it from coven?)

I wanted to have lances (or blasters) to have deepstrike AT weapon that are hard to kill. Scourges are cheaper, but don't last long. A half-dead scourge squad is half-efficient, while a kabalite blob, at first is mainly anti-infantry. But after half-dead, they become more AT oriented. (I expect to place lances behind the splinter, to be the lasts ones to be removed).

dumpeal wrote:

The point was to drop them in cover. So, a single blast shot shouldn't wipe them totally. Unless the blast is also "ignore cover" (damn it, imperial scums!). And I don't care about morale, because they are fearless, because of the coven haemy. (why dont take it from coven?)

I wanted to have lances (or blasters) to have deepstrike AT weapon that are hard to kill. Scourges are cheaper, but don't last long. A half-dead scourge squad is half-efficient, while a kabalite blob, at first is mainly anti-infantry. But after half-dead, they become more AT oriented. (I expect to place lances behind the splinter, to be the lasts ones to be removed).

So you have to do 21 Dangerous Terrain Test :-/

I'm not against using 20 man warriors squads but I do not think their worth is in being a deepstrike AT squad to any degree. if you spend the points on lances, even as just a secondary option you're losing out on those points being cannons and doing more damage with their primary role. The real strength in a squad that size is for splinter weaponry so cannons are faar better because you're gearing them towards their strengths.

if you want a deepstrike AT option go with Trueborn in a Raider with a WWP blaster Archon. they'll be about the same points.

I think the biggest issue with the unit is that it's a big chunk of points, with some decent killing power you really want in play, waiting on reserves.

Don't get me wrong, I love reserves - but I prefer smaller, cheaper units that I don't mind waiting for. I feel like if you're banking on that sort of firepower, you want it from T1 (which is what makes Venoms so attractive).

ignores cover weapons/blast/flamer are far to common to ever make this squad worthwhile

If you have the option to deep strike the squad wherever you like without it scattering, only for it to get hit by flamers in the next turn, frankly you deserve to lose it

I think this tactic could be viable, maybe with a haemonculus to boost their power from pain but possibly with an Archon with shadowfield to tank some of the shots coming at them. It's a great way of scrubbing out opposing backfield objective campers or deleting a small ranged unit like Long Fangs, Havocs or Lootas. Then you have a big unit running round in their deployment zone in a classic pincer move. I was pleasantly surprised by a big warrior squad when I tried it a while ago, but had to split them down to replace the wych squads. I just bought another box of warriors today though, so this is one I will be experimenting with!

Mr Believer wrote:

If you have the option to deep strike the squad wherever you like without it scattering, only for it to get hit by flamers in the next turn, frankly you deserve to lose it    

I've been saying! There's a lot of potential here, but you can't be all cavalier about your placement. It's going to require some thought.

Jimsolo wrote:

Mr Believer wrote:

If you have the option to deep strike the squad wherever you like without it scattering, only for it to get hit by flamers in the next turn, frankly you deserve to lose it    

 I've been saying!  There's a lot of potential here, but you can't be all cavalier about your placement.  It's going to require some thought.

And an opponent that isn't tactically flexible enough to adapt - you done have to have placed such a unit poorly for an opponent to take advantage of their presence

That's a moot argument, isn't it? It could be said of literally every unit, option, rule, and piece if wargear in the game.

If somebody puts their drop podding flamer unit next to your warriors, that means they most likely aren't landing in your deployment zone, torching stuff off your objectives. If they're hovering their Heldrake to get a shot on them, even better. It's all a matter of timing and placement - sure, you can't pick when they're going to turn up unless you get lucky with your warlord trait/have an Autarch, but you can put them somewhere where dropping flamer templates on them is the lesser of two evils. And they're present in great enough numbers that even if they lose enough for a morale test and fail, they'll still have enough guys left to test on full leadership.

At roughly 300pts a squad though, it's not really much of a distraction - it's too fragile to occupy much of the opponent's army, and not dangerous enough to warrant much attention.

A pair of Talos cost around the same and are a much bigger threat (sure, not in terms of shooting damage output, but much more difficult to get rid of and can threaten a much wider variety of targets whilst being able to protect your HQ instead of it protecting them (and possibly therefore giving up a slay the warlord point).

EDIT - Just to give you a quick comparison - I played a Tau army on Thursday that brought a unit costing a similar amount and stacked out with markerlights and a 4+ armour save.

It died in one round of shooting to a razorwing and a squad of heatlance scourges. That gave me 3 victory points, and all it managed to achieve in the game was to help one of my ravagers die.

That unit is no less tough and with a better armour save than the one we're discussing, but was still not worth the investment.

What unit did he bring?

Tau commander and markerlight drones.

Did the commander have any upgrades? Approximately how many Drones? (I assume you don't gave his list in front of you, I'm just trying to get a rough idea so I can make something like an honest comparison.)

I don't think the commander had any upgrades no, bar an invun and a couple of drones. Think there were about a dozen drones in the squadron. The Tau player reckoned it was about 300pts worth of models though, I had no reason to dispute that with him.

In some respects the unit itself is irrelevant, the point that is important is that if you're going to use a strategy like that the unit is going to be in the 'danger zone' to affect the outcome of the game. Unfortunately for us, that means they're also high up on your opponent's priority list, but they're not resilient enough to make it difficult to clear them - example below.

Your 20 strong unit arrives in rapid fire range of the enemy. Let's assume for simplicity's sake there are 20 splinter rifles and no upgrades that mess with range or number of shots. So you get 40 shots in your turn, approx 27 of which will hit, and 14 will wound (I'm rounding up to be a glass half full type person!). Against MEQ the likelihood is that's 4 dead, which forces a morale check, which they've a better than 50% chance of passing.

In return, they pour 12 shots back into your squad, 8 of which hit and 5 wound, ignoring your armour. Now we know that you'll probably pass the morale check too, so they add in some more fire, let's stay positive and assume there's just 1 other combat squad in rapid fire range (and they haven't got a full bike squad or similar that can respond!). That's roughly 7 hits, 4 wounds and you've lost almost half the unit for the priveledge of killing 4 marines. (notice here I've stuck to evaluating one of the least effective weapon options against a group of warriors - a flamer in range etc would do substantially increased damage).

Compare that for example to a gunboat raider (10 warriors no upgrades, raider with dark lance and splinter racks is my usual load), which is a cheaper unit, still causes 3 kills on his squad and has the ability to limit return fire - he's wasting shots at you if he just uses bolters (only 1 shot in 9 statistically causes a glance, not counting jink) so that cheaper unit forces him to use more specialised weaponry, and you can still jink for more resilience. Add to that, the gunboat raider can also deep strike without needing the webway portal.

Just a final note therefore - I'm not disputing that a unit of 20 warriors with a wwp can achieve 'pleasantly surprising' results (it's a unit I've done the maths on myself when looking at my lists) but it's infinitely less adaptable, and significantly more fragile than the alternative.

Thank you for the feedback. I think I'll just put that strategy in the same locker as the "7 grots tantalus drop". Which is "It's a bad strategy, but we would want it to work".