Coven army questions

Hello Dark City citizens

I have recently started to love and play the coven book. I wish to ask all the other more experienced players how they deal with Heavy AT and AA. I do have a 2k tourny this weekend and I am thinking about taking a coven pure list. I have enough models to play the Carnival of Pain formation.

So long over due, what are the different ways we deal with AT and AA? Does anyone take a pure list to tournies?

Thank you for your time and assistance.
Marium

You have grotesques to take out anything with rear armour 10-11. Talos for front armour 12-13 walkers. Splinter cannons on talos for FMC. Ignore flyers. Ignore fast vehicles you can't catch like wave serpents. Tarpit Imperial Knights.

Come to think of it, just ignore your opponents entire army and play the mission. That seems to be what works best for me. Killing stuff is a bonus.  

Ally some dark eldars, cheap hq with blaster, 5-9 kabalites with blaster in gun boat for anti armor and a razor fighter for aa and armor. Maybe a ravager for more anti armor

Or use other allies tau, eldar, sm and AM all have great aa and anti armor options.

Mushkilla wrote:

You have grotesques to take out anything with rear armour 10-11. Talos for front armour 12-13 walkers. Splinter cannons on talos for FMC. Ignore flyers. Ignore fast vehicles you can't catch like wave serpents. Tarpit Imperial Knights.

Sigh. As much as the trend of letting one person dictate our tactics for seventh edition rubs me the wrong way, Mushkilla is right again. If you don't want allies, this is it.

Jimsolo wrote:

Mushkilla wrote:

You have grotesques to take out anything with rear armour 10-11. Talos for front armour 12-13 walkers. Splinter cannons on talos for FMC. Ignore flyers. Ignore fast vehicles you can't catch like wave serpents. Tarpit Imperial Knights.

Sigh.  As much as the trend of letting one person dictate our tactics for seventh edition rubs me the wrong way, Mushkilla is right again.  If you don't want allies, this is it.

Ha ha, Jim. I can understand the frustration with feeling like you're being pigeon-holed into a certain style of play. But I take the opposite view in that Mush is actually doing a big service by taking what was previously seen as a fun but not very competitive list (all Coven army) and optimizing it for maximum performance through larger unit size and smart objective placement and positioning. I just think of it as Mush showing how to more effectively utilize the tools that GW gave us.

To answer the OP's question, I agree with Mush. If still want AT shooting, Talos are the sturdiest HWB/HL platform that we have as they don't need to jink to survive and they can finish off whatever they didn't kill in the shooting phase in the assault phase.

Jimsolo wrote:

Sigh.  As much as the trend of letting one person dictate our tactics for seventh edition rubs me the wrong way, Mushkilla is right again.  If you don't want allies, this is it.

It wasn't my intention to dictate.

I was just sharing what's works for me. I imposed some strict limitations on myself when creating my  list, I wanted to field a coven list, I didn't want to run allies, I didn't want to run more than one detachment and I didn't want to field vehicles. Then I just set out to try and make that work. There's still much to explore with coven armies I'm just exploring a small subset within my own set of limitations.

In doing that I have stumbled across one particular play style. Originally I just wanted to field 20 grotesques and multi-charge stuff. It was only through playing against lists where that wasn't always possible and fantastic feedback from members of this forum that my play-style evolved into a very mission centric area denial game.

Simplifying the game to objective placement and positioning means your opponents actual list is less of a concern. It's a weird play style I admit and not always the most exciting. But it does make things a lot simpler and reduces the number of variables involved. Rather than thinking about destroying X or Y which comes down to lots of dice rolls (and depends on what the enemy unit is). I think about being in position X or Y which is a lot less dependent on the dice. This combined with only having 4 units makes it a lot easier to think several game turns ahead.

For me playing this way has been quite a revelation and has completely changed how I see the game and evaluate lists. But it is by no means the end all or be all of playing coven armies, nor would I ever want it to be.

So apologies if I come across as dictating a single play-style that was never my intention.

Mushkilla wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:

Sigh.  As much as the trend of letting one person dictate our tactics for seventh edition rubs me the wrong way, Mushkilla is right again.  If you don't want allies, this is it.

It wasn't my intention to dictate.

I was just sharing what's works for me. I imposed some strict limitations on myself when creating my  list, I wanted to field a coven list, I didn't want to run allies, I didn't want to run more than one detachment and I didn't want to field vehicles. Then I just set out to try and make that work. There's still much to explore with coven armies I'm just exploring a small subset within my own set of limitations.

In doing that I have stumbled across one particular play style. Originally I just wanted to field 20 grotesques and multi-charge stuff. It was only through playing against lists where that wasn't always possible and fantastic feedback from members of this forum that my play-style evolved into a very mission centric area denial game.

Simplifying the game to objective placement and positioning means your opponents actual list is less of a concern. It's a weird play style I admit and not always the most exciting. But it does make things a lot simpler and reduces the number of variables involved. Rather than thinking about destroying X or Y which comes down to lots of dice rolls (and depends on what the enemy unit is). I think about being in position X or Y which is a lot less dependent on the dice. This combined with only having 4 units makes it a lot easier to think several game turns ahead.

For me playing this way has been quite a revelation and has completely changed how I see the game and evaluate lists. But it is by no means the end all or be all of playing coven armies, nor would I ever want it to be.

So apologies if I come across as dictating a single play-style that was never my intention.

Oh, you don't! It just seems like within the last couple of weeks/months, "I like to..." and "I think..." has been replaced with "Mushkilla says..." and "Here's a link to Mushkilla's post." And it's not even that you're wrong! But when everyone starts doing things one way, it makes me uncomfortable.

Your articles are all competent, and a couple have been brilliant. I don't take issue with you, I'm just uncomfortable with the (seemingly increasing) trend of people seeking one singular play style rather than thinking up new combinations and strategies themselves. 40k isn't WoW after all!

Sorry if it seemed like I was attacking you personally!

Hey yall thank you for the post and plethora of ideas. I do wish to be pure, and thought hard about it. I will drop a list soon and see what yall think. I hope the idea keep coming I am looking at all of them and see what will work for me. Maybe we will help someone else too.

Again thank you
Marium

On purity - I think the Haemonculus Covens especially are a supplement intended to function in tandem with their parent codex. Fluff wise and game wise it makes complete sense. If you are bound and determined to go with a mono-coven army, then Godspeed.

I've been using a mono-Coven army for my most recent games and not only have i been doing pretty well with it, it's the most fun I've had playing DE since the heady days of the Beast Star. No more worrying about our fragile transports, a PfP table that doesn't really help until Turn 3, and failing leadership. Also, flamers and templates in general are not the bane of my existence anymore.

I agree I have had more fun playing coven list. I have about dropped my nids altogether to play coven DE

For talos do we prefer HL or HW?

Mushkilla wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:

Sigh.  As much as the trend of letting one person dictate our tactics for seventh edition rubs me the wrong way, Mushkilla is right again.  If you don't want allies, this is it.

It wasn't my intention to dictate.

I'm not really sure why you are being semi flamed for what you said. There are very clear avenues the coven supplement has to take to do AT. It isn't really a question of tactics it basically just comes down to the math of what in the coven army has the Str to take out vehicles, look at the index and say "Ah those things!" then plan accordingly. Lol the only thing dictating play style is what has the ability to do what you want to do it. If you don't like it then ally, if you don't want to ally then make the obvious decision. We can still get quite a decent amount of Dark Lances in CS.

Mariumsc2 wrote:

For talos do we prefer HL or HW?

I think that depends on how many you have and how you're using them. I've had a lot of positive results from using a heat lance in my Dark Artisan, but I wouldn't want it if I had to cross the table. If I had at least 3 Talos, I'd give them haywire blasters, but a single Talos plinking off a hull point from something most turns doesn't seem worth giving up the splinter cannon, or a good use of a Talos.

I've wondered if shock prows on Raiders might not be a good idea for Coven armies, but I haven't tried it yet.

I'm not sure what to do about flying monstrous creatures. I have to disagree with Mush about splinter cannons on Talos being useful against them - you should score a single wound most of the time (1.8 hits, 0.9 wounds). On average dice, at least three Talos would be necessary to cause a single failed save on a flying Hive Tyrant, which would probably not be enough for a failed grounding test, and which the Tyrant would have a 50% chance of regenerating on the following turn. Venoms should fare slightly better (1 wound rather than 0.9) for considerably less points (not including the Wracks you took them with), but do have the disadvantage of getting blown up by the Tyrant every turn. Assaulting it if it fails a grounding test seems like our best bet, but following it around hoping it fails one seems impractical. So I dunno.