BR4: The Repugnant Ramblers Vs Imperial Knights - 1250pts

solar shock wrote:

Sulmo,

i'd be really interested in hearing about your CTC against a knight player. Were you running 5 heatlances I assume?

I ran a claw with two lances and one unit of three taloi with one lance. The claw killed an adamantine lance formation, losing three, the taloi killed a Knight and lost 2.

Positioning the lances was key, but mostly damage was done in hth.

solar shock wrote:

Myself will be bringing an allied DE detachment and will be using a succubus to go with the grotesqueries 2nd unit. However, if you were running pure coven; and this is probably almost impossible to get into a 1250 pts list, this is why its more effective in a larger points list.

Grotesquerie
Coven detachment (2HQ, 2Elite)

With that however, you then have to bring the added elites. So if you were going with Mush's basic format, you'd have to alter it, dropping one of the 2 talos pairs in favour of either cheap wracks or more grots. The major problem being you now have a minimum of 3 Haemies and min 4 grots or 3 grots and some wracks. The haemy WWP tax is reaching about 300 pts, and like 1/4 of his army at this point.

If I had to squeeze it in; no dex right on hand but values are close
Grotesquerie (2x7) + haemy (600ish?)
Coven detach
2x Haemy (250ish?)
5x grots (175)
5 wracks + venom (125ish)
+ a talos?

So thats 3 grot units, 1 talos and 5 wracks in a venom. Talos would be your anchor for starting on board and holding an objective, wracks would be your zip around unit for other objectives (hiding at start for not giving up FB), then you have 3 DSing grot bombs, 2x7 and 1x5 in size. At 1250 its really hard to squeeze it in and it alters the list a fair bit.

Whereas at 1500 you could swap out the wracks and grab another grot unit, although you'd still have a pretty heavy WWP tax. As that would be 4 grot units, at 350 for 10, you could go 700 for all 4 (at 5 man size), then 4 haemies, that leaves about 300 pts for talos.

That's the reason Mush doesnt use a Grotesquerie: it locks u into more superfluous choices

Sulmo wrote:

I think the one variable, therefore, which can throw your well made plan out the window is reserves. If one unit of Grots comes in before the other, then my opponent can focus fire on it and it may have to wait an extra turn to get the crucial IWND, diminishing the overall effect. The answer is actually, I believe, the Covens WL traits. One of the traits gives you reserve control, whilst the rest make ur units tougher, giving IWND to a unit of Grots off the bat for example. Against a fast objsec enemy I would roll on tactical, against a gunline I would roll either on strategic or Covens, depending on how much ruins my opponent has in his DZ. All give you a chance of getting something decent.

Yes reserves are an uncertainty. But I still haven't decided whether I want my units to come on early or late. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Power from pain makes it an even harder choice. Two units coming on at the same time is very powerful, but doesn't let your react in later turns. One unit coming on means the units might take more fire (of course that's where WWP come in and allowing you to position yourself exactly where you want and reduce incoming fire if need be), but the advantage is you still have a unit in reserve to react to your opponent.

I quite like the uncertainty of reserve with this list. It means my opponent doesn't know when I might strike. The threat of deep-strike is a potent psychological weapon in and of itself. As long as you have a unit in reserve especially a large game changing unit like 8-10 grotesques that can land without scatter, your opponent will need to think twice every time he moves a unit. The unit still has an affect on the game even though it's not on the board. So so far I haven't felt an urgent need for reserve manipulation.

solar shock wrote:

Mush, I really think you should try and work a groteserie into your lists, the buff rolls I can imagine would give you great diversity, I mean the +1 strength would considerably alter the flexibilty of your units, you'd actually be able to hurt AV12 - this one alone could significantly alter your battle strategy, while the toughness would just make them crazy durable. I know a few aren't the bee's knees, but I think they all are worth the tax. However, you'd probably be better off doing this at higher points levels, where you can bring the coven detachment in order to grab the HQ, while also grabbing a few more grot units without sacrificing somewhere else.

Maybe at a higher points level, currently though I just find it's too limiting. The Covenite Coterie detachment is not just for fielding the two grot units with WWP haemonculus but also for running multiple talos unit (rather than being restricted to taking Dark Artisan and/or Corpsthief).

Sigmaril wrote:

I've been wondering. How do you think your list will fare in Eternal War missions?

So far I have found this list actually does better in Eternal War missions. As I don't need to control objectives until turn 5 (unlike maelstrom missions), which makes things easier when you are a reserve based army. Kill point in particular is something it excels at.

The army is comprised of four very durable units. The Talos are tough and easy to hide. (So can deny turns being shot at). The grotesques are in reserve so if I go second my opponent at most gets 5 turns to kill them assuming they come on turn 2 and the game ends on turn 7. If you look at the game against GK my opponent only gets to engage my grotesques for one turn, turn 5 and its on my terms. The game is finite, so it doesn't matter how much shooting you have if you don't have enough turns to kill the unit. In kill point games I tend to get first blood and a kill point or two and then all I have to do to win is not have any units die. Which isn't that hard when your units are so resilient.

As for other eternal war mission, I might not have objective secure, but I can kill most units that contest in assault in a turn, so going second makes objective secure moot. If I go first my opponent better be sure the game ends when he contests.

Hope that helps.

I won't lie: I have been having fantastic luck with this coven list at 1850, but today I hit a speed bump. A space marine army with pods, just didnt have enough units to wipe him out. Everything with Objec secured he got an insurmountable lead turns 1, 2 and 3 on objectives and I needed to kill two 5-man tac squads to win but failed as they were too far away...

Sulmo wrote:

I won't lie: I have been having fantastic luck with this coven list at 1850, but today I hit a speed bump. A space marine army with pods, just didnt have enough units to wipe him out. Everything with Objec secured he got an insurmountable lead turns 1, 2 and 3 on objectives and I needed to kill two 5-man tac squads to win but failed as they were too far away...

I would probably try and deploy objectives in a diamond formation. If I get the side with the diamond, I would start my grotesques on the board, and spread them out to prevent any Objective Secure pods from landing on objectives. If I don't get the diamond in my deployment zone then I would reserve the grots, and he would be forced to waste his alpha strike if he wanted to secure the diamond in his deployment zone.

That being said this is theory hammer as I have yet to play this match up, but that would be my plan going into it.

I've been reading these battle reprts with glee, i had considered trying something like this out when i first got the coven book. But i just didnt think it would work on the table, thanks to you i finally got the balls to try it out and had a blast.
Played a 1500 point game against crimson fists, i fielded 2 big grots & haemie WWP units and i went for the corpsethief claw for the anvil.
There were one or 2 hairy moments (such as when his 2 squads of sternguard podded in and peppered my talos' with 2+ poison shots) but we won the game comfortably only losing 1 unit (1 of the haemonculi).
The stand out moment being one of the squads of grotesques getting an unsaved instant death hit on pedro in the final turn. I'll be playing and tweaking this for the foreseeable future now, no doubt.
Thanks Mush!

kidfist0 wrote:

I'll be playing and tweaking this for the foreseeable future now, no doubt.
Thanks Mush!

Great to hear you are enjoying these reports and they encouraged you get your own coven force raiding realspace! Looking forward to hearing more about your own experiences playing a coven army.

I know I'm late to the party on this one, @Mushkilla but I've spotted something confusing. On IK turn 3 the Knight chainswords one of your rightmost Taloi down, and then on DE turn 3 splatters the other one. But at the end of DE turn 3 you've got the Talos as claiming your opponent's Secure Objective 2 card - seems kind of hard to do when they're meat paste! Does this mean you picked up an objective point you shouldn't have? Or am I missing something?

Panic_Puppet wrote:

I know I'm late to the party on this one, @Mushkilla but I've spotted something confusing. On IK turn 3 the Knight chainswords one of your rightmost Taloi down, and then on DE turn 3 splatters the other one. But at the end of DE turn 3 you've got the Talos as claiming your opponent's Secure Objective 2 card - seems kind of hard to do when they're meat paste! Does this mean you picked up an objective point you shouldn't have? Or am I missing something?

Nice catch looks, like it. Must have been one of those lost in translations that happens when going from photos of games and memory to diagrams and battle reports. Must have been another objective that I scored, and a misinterpretation in the description on my part (as the diagrams map to my pictures). Though as this game was a few weeks ago I can't remember the exact details off the top of my head. Something scored something though!

Also sorry for the delay on more reports (I'm kind of getting sidetracked by the Skitarii release). Damn you GW! My one weakness... *shakes fists*

No worries, I figured something happened, it's always hard to keep track of these things. And I feel you on not being able to get batreps done, not even played a game in ages. Accursed uni work and commitments...

In regards to higher point Lists, I played a 1850 testgame yesterday (the relic) where I ran in to a problem with the CTC.

I played the following:

The Idea is to have a Grotesquerie for the awesome buff (in this game I rolled +1T and Grots with T6 are just mean) and add some mobile and easy to hide objective capture elements in the two Venoms. Razorwing helps with AT or with Blobs. The Claw should be the Anvil to the Grots Hammer.

Everything worked as intended, the venoms could be easily hidden, the Razorwing gave nice options upon entering.

The Problem is the Claw: In Mushs game I see the Taloi beeing mostly hidden till the reserves arrive. I did not want to hide 600 points so I deployed them aggressively. Unfortunately for me those pesky Orks had about 30 to 40 Rockets between them plus 2 Lootersquads. After round 1, one Talos was dead, the others had lost wounds. The Taloi then ate a bike squad (scoring first blood and the additional VP) before beeing wiped out.

I don´t want to discuss the game or the other list or whatever, I would like to find out if the Claw really is a good tool as the problem will be the same in each game: Do you play them aggressively, allowing the complete other army to concentrate fire OR do you hide them, effectively not using them for a few rounds and stalling the game till round 2 or 3.

Thieron wrote:

The Problem is the Claw: In Mushs game I see the Taloi beeing mostly hidden till the reserves arrive. I did not want to hide 600 points so I deployed them aggressively. Unfortunately for me those pesky Orks had about 30 to 40 Rockets between them plus 2 Lootersquads. After round 1, one Talos was dead, the others had lost wounds. The Taloi then ate a bike squad (scoring first blood and the additional VP) before beeing wiped out.

I don´t want to discuss the game or the other list or whatever, I would like to find out if the Claw really is a good tool as the problem will be the same in each game: Do you play them aggressively, allowing the complete other army to concentrate fire OR do you hide them, effectively not using them for a few rounds and stalling the game till round 2 or 3.

That's a very good point.

I have yet to try corpsetheif claw, but I'm not sure whether they would benefit my playstyle. As you mentioned I don't use my talos aggressively in most games, so scout isn't that important for me, also I like the flexibility of having multiple units. I guess with corpsethief claw you want to get a cluster of objectives in the centre of the board, as it allows them to make the most of their scout move and board presence.

One thing I have learn't is that you don't want to expose yourself unnecessarily to the enemy, regardless of how tough your units are. With corpsethief claw this is quite hard to avoid due to the size of the unit. Two squads of two talos that only start getting shot at from turn 2 are probably going to be more survivable than a corpsethief claw that scouts itself into shooting range of most of the opponents army turn 1. Limiting the number of rounds your opponent can shoot you is a really powerful in a game with a finite number of turns.

Very good points, Thieron and Mush. I am a big fan of the CtC, however, a 3+/5+ FNP just isn't all that resilient in the current game, even on a three wound, T7 MC. I've had much better success using the CtC when running it with DA complete with WL to give it 3+/4++, re-rolling ones. That is Necron Decurion-level resiliency and it makes the CtC MUCH harder to kill. Of course the problem is that's over 1000 points, so it's really only feasible games of 2000 points and up if you want to take Grots or something else decent.

Maybe it's worth considering outflanking the corpse thief claw? Could be quite strong, particularly in hammer and anvil deployment?

Just had a thought for expansion. Would it make sense to add Urien to one of the units in addition to a WWP haemy? That would give you hatred on your first charge, and Eternal Warrior already from turn 4? I'm mostly thinking of the latter. Is 140 points too steep a tax for being able to ignore Instant Death one turn sooner?

Sigmaril wrote:

Just had a thought for expansion. Would it make sense to add Urien to one of the units in addition to a WWP haemy? That would give you hatred on your first charge, and Eternal Warrior already from turn 4? I'm mostly thinking of the latter. Is 140 points too steep a tax for being able to ignore Instant Death one turn sooner?

That's not a bad idea at all, I might consider that at higher point levels, if he came with a WWP I would run him all the time. That being said another talos might be more valuable, depends on the scale of the army I guess, at higher points Urien becomes well worth considering, shame his warlord trait is useless in a coven army.

On another note, one of my 40k heroes (Fritz) has posted a video on youtube describing the tactics illustrated and discussed in these battle reports regarding diamond/triangle objective placement. Good to see it being promoted.

Sigmaril wrote:

Just had a thought for expansion. Would it make sense to add Urien to one of the units in addition to a WWP haemy? That would give you hatred on your first charge, and Eternal Warrior already from turn 4? I'm mostly thinking of the latter. Is 140 points too steep a tax for being able to ignore Instant Death one turn sooner?

nevermind this. I just noticed Uriens power doesn't stack with Haemys. Wonder where I got that idea?

2 further thoughts on this list following a few more games.

I've gone right off the corpsethief claw as its just too inflexible. Im now running 5 talos split over 1 squad of 2 and 1 squad of 3 and finding that much better.

The tyranids big gribblies REALLY dont like fighting grotesques with flesh gauntlets. And gaunt swarms dont like rampage.

kidfist0 wrote:

I've gone right off the corpsethief claw as its just too inflexible.

Thanks for the feedback, and sharing your experience with the CTC, I suspected it's inflexibility could be a problem.

On another note I'm finally getting another game in this weekend, most likely against Tau. Hopefully I'll have a report up some time next week. Sorry for the wait!

Scissorhand but that is only one then one.

I played around with this list, boosted up to 1500 by adding a 3rd unit of taloi (?). played Big Guns Never Tire against an unbound (4 HQ including astroth and sanguinor) assault heavy Blood Angels army. ended up wining when the game ended at turn 5, but played it out to turn 7 and tied due to poor decisions on my part. I didn't really care for 3 units of 2 taloi, going to run it next time as 2 units of 3.

the most important thing is this entire army fits in the new carnifex box and when I am done converting and painting it, I can leave it in my locker at the FLGS and not have to transport anything. I can't wait to get more play time with it.

Mushkilla wrote:

kidfist0 wrote:

I've gone right off the corpsethief claw as its just too inflexible.

Thanks for the feedback, and sharing your experience with the CTC, I suspected it's inflexibility could be a problem.

On another note I'm finally getting another game in this weekend, most likely against Tau. Hopefully I'll have a report up some time next week. Sorry for the wait!

Tau is a pretty easy match up for this list in my experience. The only thing that gave me a little trouble was the supporting fire special ability. If the Grots can make it in, you are probably home free. The -1 leadership from Freakish Spectacle usually means that the rare Tau unit that makes it through the assault will be running afterwards.

Drop pods is a list that has given me trouble with this set up. They have their own tactics of securing objectives (AKA landing on them) with some pods having objective secure.

Any interest in running against a Drop pod list?

Any news on the next report? I eagerly await the next pursuit of the Ramblers

Bump for new Mush reports. How do you guys think this type of Coven list would fair at 1850 vs Flyrant lists? I'm assuming the grotesques would dominate board control and just whether the dakkastorm. Str 6 with no ap makes for low mortality rates, especially when IWND kicks in.

Twin linked splinter cannons on the Talos would help to ground Flyrants.

I don't think they would be that effective. Say your taking CTC. That's 30 shots 6 hit+another 4 after rerolls= 10 hits = 5 wounds. The flyrant has a 3+ save and sometimes feel no pain. So your looking at realistically 1-2 wounds on a flyrant. Even if you ground the tyrant, your grotesques can't shoot it. The only chance you have is owning them in close combat while camping objectives. I actually think the matchup is about a 50/50 because Flyrants would barely do any dmg to your units while flying anyways.

A jetbike eldar army wouldn't even do too much dmg unless they just had 2x wraithknights to D you from range to death. A grotesque squad would survive a WWP Wraithguard deepstrike and annihilate it in combat the next round.

Slightly derailing the thread here, but Mushkilla's list with an allied eldar force of 3 Eldar D wep barrage platforms sounds insane. Who cares about the wraithknight when you can D from out of sight.