Teach me the error of my ways!

I was stood up today, so we actually start on Saturday. Sorry.

May the force be with you

I second through 5th that dark Artisan. Can't recommend the unit enough.

So? How has it been?

I have tried the dark artisan a bit. While I like it on paper it tends to fall short on the table. It has potential. Just not much.

I do however love the Grotesquery and the Corpsethief is pretty cool

What about you Agatha? When are you going to play?

Barking Agatha wrote:

I was stood up today, so we actually start on Saturday. Sorry.

How did it go?

Sorry, we haven't started yet Something came up for him this week.

Bloody hell. But okay. How do you want this to get down? Consult us on every turn?

Finally we can start! Sorry about the long delay.

The Mission is 'Cloak and Shadows'. The table is like this:



The objectives are marked 1 through 6, our side is the purple shaded one, and their side is the blue one.

He rolled 'Iron Resolve' as his Warlord Trait, and I've rolled 'Blood Dancer' (but I can still re-roll it under instructions!) The meringues have the initiative and will set up first, which they have already done:





So it's our turn to deploy now. Instructions?

Note: Yes, his 'Predators' are actually Razorbacks borrowed from someone else. He seems to have lost half his tanks somewhere, and he wanted to delay until he could find them. After more than two weeks just to get started though, not a chance!

Barking Agatha wrote:

Finally we can start! Sorry about the long delay.

The Mission is 'Cloak and Shadows'. The table is like this:



The objectives are marked 1 through 6, our side is the purple shaded one, and their side is the blue one.

He rolled 'Iron Resolve' as his Warlord Trait, and I've rolled 'Blood Dancer' (but I can still re-roll it under instructions!) The meringues have the initiative and will set up first, which they have already done:





So it's our turn to deploy now. Instructions?

Note: Yes, his 'Predators' are actually Razorbacks borrowed from someone else. He seems to have lost half his tanks somewhere, and he wanted to delay until he could find them. After more than two weeks just to get started though, not a chance!

What was the plan behind objective placement?

Any chance we could get a confirmed army list for you please? I've tried to piece together what was agreed on from previous posts but it would be very helpful to have it all in one place with units and wargear options.

Also, a couple of questions on the terrain.

Is the Bastion in their deployment zone an actual bastion or is it dilapidated?

Similarly, what's the score with the Skyshield? Is it working? If not, what does it count as in terms of cover, terrain etc.

Definitely reroll the warlord trait, as Blood Dancer is useless to you as you hit anything in the SM codex on a 3+ already. I'd actually have suggested using the tactical traits table, as we're playing Maelstrom, but it's too late for that now.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Any chance we could get a confirmed army list for you please? I've tried to piece together what was agreed on from previous posts but it would be very helpful to have it all in one place with units and wargear options.

Also, a couple of questions on the terrain.

Is the Bastion in their deployment zone an actual bastion or is it dilapidated?

Similarly, what's the score with the Skyshield? Is it working? If not, what does it count as in terms of cover, terrain etc.

Definitely reroll the warlord trait, as Blood Dancer is useless to you as you hit anything in the SM codex on a 3+ already. I'd actually have suggested using the tactical traits table, as we're playing Maelstrom, but it's too late for that now.

The final list was this:

Belfrit with Agoniser,Blast Pistol, Soul Trap, and Shadow Field
+ 4 Grots on their Raider, with Dark Lance and Night Shields

The Shrine of Resentful Spite (Incubi) on a Venom with Extra Splinter Cannon (*)

The Heirs of Loathing (Trueborn) w 4 x blasters, on a Venom with extra splinter cannon.

The Pink Candy Pack: 9 Kabalites, one blaster, pink candy raider with dark lance, night shields, and splinter racks

The Blue Candy Pack: 10 Kabalites, one blaster, blue candy raider with dark lance, night shields, and splinter racks

The Grens, Bluegrens, and Redgrens: 3 x 3 Reaver Jetbikes with 1 caltrops each

Heartrip Eyrie: 5 Scourges with 4 Haywire Blasters

The Poison Spike: Ravager with 3 dark lances

The Bastion and Skyshield are both dilapidated. No, it's not too late to change our minds about the warlord trait... but no re-roll, of course.

Mushkilla wrote:

What was the plan behind objective placement?

They were placed by a third party, to keep it fair

A few thoughts before we get going.

1) He's got a range advantage with a lot of his weapons (Missile Launchers, Autocannon, Hunter-Killer Missiles) but most of our army needs to be close range to be effective

2) Bit hard to tell from the photos but it looks like if you deploy on your left flank you will block his LOS to a lot of your army and hopefully let you get up close without taking too much damage

3) His Captain is tooled for melee but is currently as far from the enemy as is physically possible so I'm not sure what he's planning on doing back there

4) It's Maelstrom. You have 3 units of Reavers who should be able to claim objectives fairly easily so keeping them alive and zipping back and forth between objectives 1-4 will hopefully let you score some easy points whilst the rest of the army does the heavy lifting

I'll have a think about deployment and general battle plans and hopefully add something later.

Step one, I would think, is to identify target priority? This will help determine deployment (setting yourself up to deal with those threats) and general gameplay.

My vote is the Preds, followed closely by the Devastators, and then largely troops due to ObSec.

Note that Devastators are second to Preds because they can be "more easily" neutralized by being tied up in combat, rather than more or less having to be shot off the board (with the chance of being healed by the Techmarine).

To this end my general thought is to block LoS to as much of your stuff as possible (derp much? Behold my tactical genius) with the plan of...
A) Pull those Preds forward. Make them want to move closer to you, even a couple of inches to try to get a better angle. Devastators and Tacs in Rhinos need to stand still to fire effectively, so splitting his army into "range bands" (so you can deal with the first while mostly being untouched by the ones further back) is the goal. It will not work perfectly, but hindering any of his less mobile units is key.
B) Set up your Ravager, Scourges, and Raiders to plink away at the Preds. A single Pen is fine for T1, so long as they're snap-firing on his next turn. Raiders will likely need to work in tandem, but position so they have a secondary target in case one gets a lucky shot, etc.
C) Set up Blasterborn and Archon/squad via Turbo-boost to attack targets T2. I would likely send the Archon after the Devs to get that clump of firepower taken care of, plus the Sgt can be manipulated by your having a soul-trap. He'd be silly to accept the challenge, the Devs are dead either way on a charge from your Grots, but worst case is you pull his Ld bonus out of the equation.
Blasterborn will want to be ready to pounce on a tank of choice, likely the least-damaged based on the previous turn's shooting. With exceptional dice and a slew of dead predators, I would move them toward ObSec Rhinos with a secondary of holding whatever objective is available, if any.

Fellow Archons, please chime in and tell me how foolish I am. I've been away from the DE (and really, 40k in general) for a while, so I'm largely using this as an exercise to think more tactically with the DE and generally up my game.

I agree with deploying in your left. If you must feed that pred something, make it something that can hold the central objective. I generally always reroll blood dancer. It doesn't make you high enough WS to make marines hit on 5s and there is very few models you're not already hitting on 3s. If you get labyrinthine cunning then I'd consider deep striking the Trueborn and scourges for backfield vehicle mashing.

I always hated that kind of deployment. Enables the enemy to shoot you down one by one and doesn't give you much room to maneuver. That's basically the worst start.

Are you able to put some stuff behind line of sight blocking terrain?
I would even say put everything that isn't line of sight protected in Reserves because he has the advantage of the first turn and you're able to deep Strike later.

Putting as much mission makers as possible in the open without cover would've helped. Make it unattractive for him. You actually don't need cover in the late game that much because you can jink. You need line of sight blocking terrain.

You need to deep Strike and do some serious damage the turn you arrive.
I really hope you get line of sight blocking terrain for the grotesques because otherwise their effectiveness is harmed too much. And the Incubbi too of course.
True born kill the tanks, maybe even the reaver if you desperately need to finish them off, but they should be easy to hide.

Okay, here goes! Given the range advantage and that he has 1st turn I think we need to be patient with a lot of our army. I'd suggest putting the Trueborn, Ravager and Scourges into deep strike reserve so they can escape a couple of turns of marine firepower and arrive turn 2 or 3 in a decent position to start taking out the vehicles.

The Grotesques and Incubi need to deploy on our left, using the big building between objectives 3 and 5 to block LOS to as much of the enemy army as possible (taking into account first turn moves for vehicles). First turn they can move 12" and flat out another 18" so they should be able to deploy pretty far back, preferably out of range of the devastators. The Reavers can also start as far back as possible to keep them out of weapon range. They have 48" movement so they can get into position pretty damn quick when needed.

The ones that I'm in 2 minds about are the Candy Packs. Not sure whether they should deep strike in or deploy on the table with the Incubi and Grots. Option A keeps them safer for longer but option B gives a bit of target saturation and potentially gets them into position quicker.

Turn 1 will be avoiding their shooting then zoom into position as fast as possible to either claim objectives or gain a safe position from which to launch our assault next turn.

I would strongly suggest rolling on either the Tactical or Strategic table for warlord traits. I don't think the DE one offers too much for us in this game.

I don't think that anything is going to get posted...

If they got that many transports, the ideal is to wreck them (wreck, not annihilate), and use the wreckage as cover.

CptMetal wrote:

Are you able to put some stuff behind line of sight blocking terrain?

Okay... this is what that looks like:



If you look at that from their side of the table, it looks like this:



As you can see, the devastators can still see a bit of the Grotesque's Raider from behind their window (a bit of sail and the top of the dark lance). That shouldn't count, in my opinion, but I can already hear a 'Does too!' so...

The Blue Candy Raider behind the skull can't be seen from that side, but from the other side...



That definitely counts! I don't see a way to place more than one Raider so that it's absolutely out of sight from every angle. When you think about it, their 'box' is pretty big!

Anyway, what I would like now is specific advice on where to place our pieces (like Count Adhemar was doing). It's all very well to say 'deploy on the left' or 'deploy out of sight', but what I was hoping for was more like: 'put A behind the temple of skulls, B behind the middle skull, C behind that, keep D and E in reserve' (for example).

The idea is that you're teaching me, so instead of letting me screw it up and then telling me what I did wrong, you show me how to do it right to begin with. We're just about ready to start, so how do I deploy?

Are you able to pivot the Raiders at all so that they are facing more towards the marine's table edge? Might help with LOS issues. Also, check the range from the devastators as they look like they could possibly be out of range anyway.

Good call. I would say turn them facing your enemy. Even if he can see the rear you are safe because you get a better cover save if he can't shoot at the side he is facing.

That set up really sucks though.

Archon Raider
Incubbi Venom get cover and flank them together with everything else onto the middle board your left side. Ignore the tanks.
True born Venom would shock them. It's just a too big distance. Try to get the tanks. What's your warlord trait anyway?
Raider 1 doesn't matter as long as they got as much cover as possible. Boost them flat out on to you left flank. Target saturation. Try to keep the building between your key units archon, and Raider.
Raider 2 same as above
Reavers 1 doesn't matter where you hide them. If you can't hide them put them next to your Raiders and units in cover that can be seen. Make him shoot them instead. If they survive grab objectives and make him regret letting them live.
Reavers 2 as above
Reavers 3 as above
Scourges
The table is bag for you in terms of distance so better use them to shock behind the predators. Maybe even take some fire. At least they will shake up his plans.

Ravager
One of those six tiles is 24x24 inches? He might be useless in this setting. Best case he draws fire and endures enough to save the rest of your army. Get him together with the Raiders but behind him. Make him choose. Unless you're in bolter range in mid board. Then the neglected flank tactic with the Ravager first to protect the rest.

Suggestions?

Okay, you're still not telling me what goes where. I'll work something out, take a picture later today, and submit it for approval. This is the point of the whole thing: I really, really don't want you to be telling me in a couple of weeks that 'my mistake was putting the second raider behind the middle skull' when I'm asking you right now where to put it!