An expensive idea

Grotesques can come in units of up to ten... Webway portal gives deep strike with no scatter. Has anyone tried making a huge unit of Grotesques, possibly one that has been fielded in a Grotesquerie formation for the buffs off the latest experiments table, webway portal right into your opponents most expensive units. That would stop your opponent from sniping them off while they walk up. Good idea?

Just theory crafting and hoping someone has done something like this.

Also as a side question, does Urien Rakarth's Father of Pain special rule stack with a unit attached to a haemonculus?

For example A unit of wracks from the Scarlet epicureans detachment who is joned by a haemonculus and is within 12 of Urien Rakarth would start on turn one with the upgrades from Power from pain turn 4? +1 from the haemonculus, +1 from Urien Rakarth, and +1 from th detachment.


Is this correct or have i misinterpreted something?

Terrible idea. You DS in and do nothing for a turn whilst taking every gun your opponent has to the face. I'd much rather stick the two squads of 4 or 5 Grots in Raiders with Nightshields and get into your opponents lines as quickly as possible.

Won't you take thier guns for longer though if you're just running up the board?

If you wait untill turn 2 and drop in a unit of grots with a heamy, and a dark artisan detachement with spirit probe nearby each other. You would be able to place the models anywhere and get a 4+ feel no pain.

Isn't that better than any cover save stealth would give you?

It's a cute idea, and one that many players come up with when they start delving into WWP options. Can it work? Absolutely. Can it work often enough that it's worth the prohibitive cost? I'm not so sure.

Lupefi wrote:

Won't you take thier guns for longer though if you're just running up the board?

Raiders can move 30"-36" a turn, so they can get in the enemy's grill in a single turn of movement, which means grotesques virtually never spend time "running up the board".

Lupefi wrote:

If you wait untill turn 2 and drop in a unit of grots with a heamy, and a dark artisan detachement with spirit probe nearby each other. You would be able to place the models anywhere and get a 4+ feel no pain.

That's an incredibly expensive option, which also happens to be very slow, relies on getting favourable reserve rolls, can't do anything the turn it arrives, and still gets nuked by things like vindicators in shooting or ruined by things like imperial knights in combat.

Hell, a 100 pt dreadnought can charge them and tie them up the entire game.

Best case scenario, you're up against a static army (which are rare in 7th nowadays), you roll well for both reservers, plonk down both units, hope that they don't die and then try charge your targets next turn.

Worst case scenario, reserve rolls fail for a turn or two, and you site with half of your entire army waiting while the rest is wiped out. Or failing that, you turn up, even where you want to, and the enemy is mobile enough to simply split up and run away.

Lupefi wrote:

Isn't that better than any cover save stealth would give you?

The cover save is just a bonus to try help them make that turn 2 charge. The webway portal does keep them safer, but it also actively prevents you from ever making that turn 2 charge, and charges you 35 pts at the same time.

Damn. I really want webway portal to be better. its such a cool concept and it feels very DE esq. Thanks for the advice guys!!

Webway an Archon with 3 Medusae in a venom or firedragons in a raider. Thats the best way to use a Wwp IMO

I have done this exact thing. (Grotesquerie with 2 10 man grot units, each with an attached IC and a WWP.) The list wrecks face. I bring a DE CAD to get the second IC, and you just have all the rest of it focus fire on anything which could ID the grots.

I've never had a list be able to bring enough firepower against it to bring down either of the grot units.

That being said, in a large tournament, I think it would get obliterated. D weapons (particularly blast and template D) would just ruin your life.

Side note: I am bringing a variant of this to an ITC event later this year. (10 man unit of grots attached to a Corsair Void Dreamer, who can catapault them across the table for a Turn 1 assault.)

It is very fun to play (2x 9-10 via WWP) but not really efficient as you loose a turn when you arrive - landing in cover helps obviously because the worse that will happen is that you suffer a wound or two. You can then use your run move to spread out. But then all the enemy guns point at you and you do risk being charged

Mushkillas battle reports titled the Repugnant Ramblers uses 2 big deepstriking units

You lose a turn, true, but that's true of any DS assault unit.  If you'd footslogged them, you'd probably have lost those turns anyway (and endured an extra round of shooting on top of it).

Yep its been done before and it can win as well.

Check out Mushkillas bat reps.

Will do. Thanks!

I think 2 grotesqueries in 4 raiders would be just as effective, and potentially more effective than 20 grots with WWP deep strikes. The problem is that those grots aren't going to make a difference in the game at all until turn 2, when they arrive and have to wait through an entire round of shooting before they can potentially assault(assuming something else doesn't assault them after they're whittled down by shooting.) So it will be turn 3 at the earliest before they can assault.

That means that for 2-3 turns, the enemy is doing what enemy's do to your army with half your army points not useable(assuming you're playing 1850). If you play against ANY highly mobile army, you auto-lose, since they'll just use their mobility to get away from you as soon as your grots arrive, kill everything else, and play keep away from the grot fatboys for the rest of the game while they slowly whittle down the grots from range. That's what I'd do, anyhow.

Further, even against armies that are NOT highly mobile, you risk half of your army not coming in when you want them to. If you did something like that, you'd almost HAVE to take some sort of reliable reserves manipulation to ensure poor reserves rolls didn't cost you key games.

But all this advice is from a tournament player's perspective where maelstrom or maelstrom hybrid rules are in effect. For a beer and pretzels game with your friends where there is nothing at stake and you don't really care if it only works 40% of the time, but when it works, it works really, really well...GO FOR IT!

However you decide to field them, these things become beasts in combat. Send in these guys with a haemonculus and they will be fearless from turn one and regenerate wounds from turn three. In the grotesquerie, they also profit from a chart respective to the combat drugs chart. They can only be instakilled by s10 so it will take amassed firepower to bring them down.

I have run one unit of six grots. They can threaten fortifications. Places where your opponent is strong. Dropping them on a crucial objective or in a Tau deployment will force him to handle them.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I think 2 grotesqueries in 4 raiders would be just as effective, and potentially more effective than 20 grots with WWP deep strikes.

Agreed.

Painjunky wrote:

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I think 2 grotesqueries in 4 raiders would be just as effective, and potentially more effective than 20 grots with WWP deep strikes.

Agreed.

I third this idea! Tried it a few weeks ago, tabled my GK/SM enemy

Two grotesqueries across four raiders is epic. I have done it with a Freakshow, and had the Haemonculi swap formations (so their group of grotesques was projecting a -2). Shock Prows on everything. Routed three groups of Guardsmen off the table before even getting into assault.

Switch the Haemies!? You're a genius!!

1++ wrote:

Painjunky wrote:

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I think 2 grotesqueries in 4 raiders would be just as effective, and potentially more effective than 20 grots with WWP deep strikes.

Agreed.

I third this idea! Tried it a few weeks ago, tabled my GK/SM enemy

Try a grotesquerie (or 2) with reaverspam... Necron decurions, SM gladius and tau cheese players at my locals now respect the DE.

General consensus is that Grots are better with transports then wwp.
Not gonna lie though for my first game i will most likely still be using wwp in my first game as i love the idea. I'll be picking up some grots this week and reavers later when my army has had time to grow. Anyone got any good sites/ways to pick up models for cheap?


Edit: Grots are so expensive, I didn't realize it was 25 for one model. I thought it would be a box of 3.

Lupefi wrote:

Edit: Grots are so expensive, I didn't realize it was 25 for one model. I thought it would be a box of 3.

Yeah, that's why most people convert a lot of their grots from other stuff.

Whats the best conversion for my money? I've seen a lot of rat ogres and one or two that looked like they started as trolls, not sure. I want at least one or two of the GW finecast since i think they are great models but if conversions are cheaper i'd be more than willing to go that route. Plus large groups of the GW finecasts look a little goofy IMO with all of the models posed in the same position.

I personally think these are the coolest/easiest conversions:

How would you convert thoose? Ive never done any conversions or serious modeling projects.

Those? You literally just throw the spare mask from the talos kit over their faces, and stick them on 40mm GW bases.