Tips/Things to remember

More things to remember...

- Throw PLASMA grenades to infantry as much as you can (S4 AP4 small blast = cool!)
- When placing terrain, put as many ruins (or other area terrain) in the middle of the board as you can. This will save your wyches/warriors/etc when disembarking or ending combats.
- USE BAITS AND TRAPS. You're hunting vermin, remember.

Your flicker field is an invulnerable save so you get that against failing a dangerous terrain test. Immobilised flyers are not fun!

Going to ground in Ruins is 3+ but 2+ in area terrain only right?

shadowseercB wrote:

Going to ground in Ruins is 3+ but 2+ in area terrain only right?

Going to ground gives you +1 to your cover save.

Going to ground in area terrain gives you +2 to your cover save.

Going to ground in area terrain (5+), gives you a 3+ cover save.

Going to ground when obscured by a ruin (4+), gives you a 3+ cover save.

Going to ground when obscure by a ruin (4+) and in area terrain, gives you a 2+ cover save.

The ground floor of a ruin often counts as area terrain. You have a unit on the ground floor in the area terrain. If you opponent draws line of sight though one of the walls of the ruin you would count as being obscured by the ruin, so would get a 2+ cover save for going to ground because of area terrain. If your opponent shot you from the other side of the ruin where he didn't have to draw line of sight through any walls you would only get a 3+ cover save for going to ground as you would only be in area terrain.

Don't forget vehicle craters. For some reason they are 4+ areas.

Vasara wrote:

Don't forget vehicle craters. For some reason they are 4+ areas.

Yeah that's an odd one as it says replace the vehicle with a crater or a wreckage. Craters are 5+ area terrain, wreckages are area terrain that gives you a 4+ cover save if you are behind it. In our area we just count them as craters (5+ area terrain), as we consider the definition for wreckage is for larger wrecks like a wrecked landing craft, titans. Ironically when a vehicle is wrecked it doesn't become a wreckage! Silly GW rules!

Jink stacks with Shrouded or stealth for night fighting.

Remember to think about the order in which you fire your guns at a target.

It cost me a game on Sunday. I was trying to shoot some Terminators (in cover) off an objective with 3 Ravagers! There were three or four in front of his Grand Master and one behind the Grand Master. I should have fired the disintegrator Ravager first and killed some or all of the guys in front and THEN the dark lance Ravagers which would only need him to fail one cover save to instagib his Grand Master and then eventually the last guy. As it turned out, I fired the DL first and he had one left and still claimed the objective.

Mushkilla wrote:

Vasara wrote:

Don't forget vehicle craters. For some reason they are 4+ areas.

Yeah that's an odd one as it says replace the vehicle with a crater or a wreckage. Craters are 5+ area terrain, wreckages are area terrain that gives you a 4+ cover save if you are behind it. In our area we just count them as craters (5+ area terrain), as we consider the definition for wreckage is for larger wrecks like a wrecked landing craft, titans. Ironically when a vehicle is wrecked it doesn't become a wreckage! Silly GW rules!

You could argue that a regular crater (from a missile explosion) confers a save due to you hiding, much like trees, but a crater with a dead vehicle is also a pretty good bullet-stopper as well, like a ruined wall.

Seeing as the latest contribution resulted from my own noobishness, I've put together this for myself and any fellow hopeless types: Turn by turn checklist

Hope it helps. I may update it in future if necessary, and if people ask nicely..

Ollelta wrote:

Seeing as the latest contribution resulted from my own noobishness, I've put together this for myself and any fellow hopeless types: Turn by turn checklist

Hope it helps. I may update it in future if necessary, and if people ask nicely..

This is rather useful!
One thing that I am not sure of in that is that "embarked units cannot contest for linebreaker". Probably true, but the vehicle can do that, right? If so, it is a little extra info there

I did try to check over the majority of these as I was putting it together and I may have missed stuff, however; Linebreaker requires a scoring or denial unit, and the exceptions to both include: "If it is a vehicle, or is a unit currently embarked on a Transport vehicle, or is occupying a building." (BRB p122-123) So I think this one holds true.

..wonders whether it's worth putting page numbers in if I ever revise it..

I've been reading over this thread, and I have to say even having played the Dark Kin for nearly a decade I've picked up a trick or two (or at the very least some things to keep in mind).

I tend to play casually, and so I don't hone my competitive edge very often. There are plenty of things I could tighten up on, and of particular interest is the idea of Pain Token management as a real boon of the army - obviously having that first Token on key units can be game changing, and it's something that I should really focus on in terms of upping my game.

So - awesome, we want to make sure our fleshy units kill other fleshy units! Great! But beyond that, how do you make sure the right fleshy unit kills something instead of just adding onto the wound pile? The answer (or at least a big part of it) - knowing your damage capabilities.

To this end I decided to mathhammer the output of various anti-infantry squads... and then realized that I really only had one that needed any real work... but I guess that makes it easy.

One of my new favorite units is 10 Kabalites in a Raider - the Raider gets Night Shields and Splinter Racks, and the Warriors get a Cannon. At 12", the squad puts out 9.3 wounds on anything toughness based (I call this the "good game, Wraithlord" technique). At 24" it still supplies a respectable 5.3 wounds. Snap shotting is still 3.25 (assuming 12", or as I like to think of it, charge range). The overwatch potential is one reason I wanted to test out the Rack-Raider unit. Don't forget to use heavy-mode on the cannon for any snap-fires.

A 10-man (or woman) squad of Wyches will tack on 3 wounds, plus whatever you can feasibly get with a grenade. Venoms do a reliable 4.

One boon of poison is that is makes calculating your firepower so incredibly easy. 5 Marines left in that unit? Plan to fire two venoms (2-3 down) and then finish them off with your rapid-firing Warriors. Don't just measure to the nearest Guardsman Dave the next time your Wyches are ready to charge in - measure to the 5th or 6th guy in to see if softening up the unit will be worth your time (or a waste).

Happy Hunting,

Khira'lyth

I might as well add my current approach to using warrior raiders. Who knows someone might find it useful (or just call me mad).

What I like to do with warrior raiders, is to only have my warriors embark on the raider when they really need to be (or nothing can threaten that raider). I want my warriors spending as little time in that raider death trap as possible. I also found it a good idea not to make a raider more expensive than it needs to be, they are fine without upgrades. When I realised they were going to be empty most of the game it made it a lot more apparent that it wasn't worth spending extra points on them.

Area terrain also makes warriors a real pain to deal with as they can go to ground for a 3+ cover save and still put out some decent snapshot fire thanks to their splinter cannon. Also an empty raider more often than not gets ignored, meaning It's far more likely to be around late game, giving me more mobility on turn 4+ when it really matters.

Warriors in area terrain with an empty raider near by are deceptively mobile. They can redeploy to an objective that is between 49-59" away in two turns (T4: 2d6 pick the highest + 2" embark range + 12" raider move + 18" flat out + T5: 6" raider move + 6" disembark + 1d6 re-rollable fleet run + 3" objective capture range). Perfect for capturing objectives in the late game.

When I consider the above I find splinter racks, flicker fields and even night shields to be a bit of a trap on raiders, as they are not cheap and encourage your warriors to stay in their raiders. This reduces your target saturation and lets your opponent kill two birds with one stone (suddenly not only is that autocannon destroying your raider but it's also killing 5-6 warriors).

I like my troops to be able to function effectively both in and out of their transports.

Hope that's helpful.