Iron Hands oh my god...

A Dark Creed Tantalus is quite an expensive option to take out a 110 pt HQ. Iron Father is grossly undercosted and needs to be about 200 points.
A Deathjester with Curtainfall using An Example Made and Shrieking Doom would get the job done. You could even make that DJ your warlord and give him Foot in The Future to absolutely maximise accuracy and damage. A DJ is 45 points

I think for Dark Eldar, the character won't be the lynchpin. There will likely be three components of an Iron Hands list: infantry, vehicles, and support characters.

A lot of Iron Hands support characters make the vehicles significantly harder to kill. The 5++ aura is also really good, but mostly against AP 3/4. We do have a lot of dark light, but melee and splinter weapons don't really care about a 5++, it is the base 3+ that is important.

Haywire definitely looks good against the vehicles. But the vehicles themselves aren't *that* scary against our vehicles. We get a 5++ and FNP on most vehicles with a negative to hit. Dreadnoughts are easily tanked by Archons or Wyches.

The things that scare me the most are Intercessors and Aggressors. They put out a lot of shots. But the toughness doesn't matter against splinter and the 5++ doesn't matter because the 3+ is better anyway.

Elfric wrote:

Is the Iron Father the linchpin of the army?  You cannot tell me that Dark Eldar and especially Harlequins don't have the tools to take him out

Lynchpin for sure. He functions as a Chaplain with a fixed ritual, and a better Techmarine. As long as the Iron Father is alive everything is going to take more to kill.

One of the better tools we have is a stock Archon with Huskblade. Other character killing methods involve killing their bubble wrap and positioning Reavers or Blast Pistol units close enough to target with shooting.

Before you get ahead of yourself with a sniper tactic to kill the iron father, they have a 2+ bodyguard/grot shield/look out sir strat. Don't remember cost for it though.

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1 CP.....

At this point I almost feel like baiting out stratagems and waiting until their CP tank is empty will be one of the most effective strategies against Iron Hands. It seems like they have something to cover almost every scenario but it's all going to add up and they're probably not going to be running more than one Battalion.

i think the best answer to IH are 9 talos backed up by a haemonculus with vextator mask.
This setup has the best tools to deal with them. 18d3 haywires shots, a unit that can actually survive the overwatch AND actually kill something in cc, durability and the haemonculus can help out by completely ignoring one overwatch and make the most dangerous target fight last.
We are talking about a spearhead that costs 952 points, the rest can go to darklight or even better disintegrators to deal with the surrounding marines...

Baiting sounds good. The stratagems are really good and I'm struggling in how to take them all. My list will probably be a double battalion board control list to provide access to know stratagems.

Gorgon wrote:

Before you get ahead of yourself with a sniper tactic to kill the iron father, they have a 2+ bodyguard/grot shield/look out sir strat. Don't remember cost for it though.

How does it work? Is it lost wounds transferred, or failed saves? That makes a big difference with Dd6.

The Ironstone has to be carried by another HQ, right?

1 CP stray for an infantry unit. When a character within 3" of that infantry unit would take damage, on a 2+ it is transfered to the infantry unit. The damage is 1:1 for mortal wounds. So if the character took 6 damage, then the infantry unit would take 6 mortal wounds.

Some.. curious. If the character took damage it might be able to get the 6+++ and then the infantry unit also gets a 6+++? I sort of assume just the infantry unit would get the FNP.

Man, I don't know if the new Marines supplements are officially Too Good but they sure as hell feel obnoxious to play against.

I'm going with obnoxious in the case of Iron Hands. I just can't get over Calculated Fury. So many stupid combinations come to mind, like move and shoot Landspeeders and moving Scout Marine snipers. Not only do they not suffer the move and shoot penalty, but at actually better at hitting than normal SMs. Gratuitous.

I'll admit there's plenty of potential there with Raven Guard. But, they've never been popular, no matter how good they've been.

I've had a chance to look at the supplement in greater detail, and a few things popped out:

-Lots of redundant vehicle healing abilities, BS boosts and mortal wound infliction to vehicles.

-Unclear wording about the separation between Codex: SM and Iron Hands. At times it implies Iron Hands can use Codex: SM relics, Strategems and Warlord Traits. I am still confused by this.

-Calculated Fury is only available if every model in the army is Iron Hands, or successor.

-Iron Hands Strategems don't have any restrictions as far as being Primaris specific.

-The Iron Father is ridiculous, and ridiculously under costed. He has no invulnerable save, though. Just the 5+ Ignore Injury.

Okay, the lack of invul makes him easier to deal with. He's still going to be ridiculous tho

The Iron Father's 5++ aura should apply to himself, no?

I don't understand how anyone can miss that the 5 invoun aura applies on himself... Has something changed?

DevilDoll wrote:

I don't understand how anyone can miss that the 5 invoun aura applies on himself... Has something changed?

nope he still has the 2+.5++,5+++

what concerns me is that iron Hands can now potentially field ~9 CHARACTER dreadnoughts
Imagine that: They have a stratagem that grants one dreadnought the character keyword before the battle starts and normal dreads have less than 10 wounds. I'd prepare myself for an unshootable castle with a 5++ save and no malus to hit while moving, reagining up to 3 wounds per battle round per dread, or repair a vehicle twice with a stratagem
Oh yeah and one of them can overwatch on 4+

The Iron Hands player could hide some scouts in a magic box and it would be impossible to hit the character dreads unless you rushed his lines

exactly
the new guy, 3 techmarines, 3x5 scouts, 30 intercessors, 3 mortis dreads, 3 dreads are around 1800 pts
and you cant shoot the dreads if he spends 6cp

Elfric wrote:

The Iron Hands player could hide some scouts in a magic box and it would be impossible to hit the character dreads unless you rushed his lines

Does anyone *actually* play with magic boxes? I've never been in a tourney that included them, and I don't know anyone willing to use them in friendly games.

AzraeI wrote:

DevilDoll wrote:

I don't understand how anyone can miss that the 5 invoun aura applies on himself... Has something changed?

nope he still has the 2+.5++,5+++

what concerns me is that iron Hands can now potentially field  ~9 CHARACTER dreadnoughts
Imagine that: They have a stratagem that grants one dreadnought the character keyword before the battle starts and normal dreads have less than 10 wounds. I'd prepare myself for an unshootable castle with a 5++ save and no malus to hit while moving, reagining up to 3 wounds per battle round per dread, or repair a vehicle twice with a stratagem
Oh yeah and one of them can overwatch on 4+

That's 9 cp for 9 character dreads, given IH have a lot of good stratagems I doubt they'll take that many. I could see 3 though, that would still be a pain.

Iron Hands can definitely use the Space Marines stratagems. Honestly, even with the buffs, no one would play a supplement without access to the main codex stratagems and relics.

Iron Hands are definitely going to be starved for CP. Building a couple lists, I could spend all of the CP before game. Someone above mentioned baiting out CP and I think that will be very important.

It seems like all the new marines are a bit cp starved, since they have so many good stratagems and their absolute cheapest troop option is 55pts, and not everyone wants to take scouts. Plus no more loyal 32 if you want the doctrines, which are a fairly big loss. I expect the normal for many marine lists will be dual battalions, with at least one filled out with scouts.

Just some back of the napkin math, since I keep seeing people saying Haywire is the best solution to Iron Hands.

On average, we need slightly over 43 Haywire shots from Scourges to kill a fully buffed Leviathan (that has a 5+++ from strats). 15 Scourges put out an average of 24 Haywire shots a turn. If the Dreadnought is left alive, it can be healed 6 + D3 wounds, and the Scourges will almost certainly not survive a shooting phase within twenty four inches of the enemy.

We need 58 shots from Talos, and 9 Talos put out an average of 36 a turn.

This is to kill one vehicle that costs 300 points. It's bonkers.

Edit: Fixed math.

Now do it for Skyweavers, witht he Great Harlequin rr 1's to hit.