Kenny3760 goes to War

Hi Guys, first time I've attempted anything like this but hopefully it will work out ok.
I intend to run this thread as an ongoing tactica of my army's progress through this years tournament season, culminating in October with Throne of Skulls at Warhammer world. It'll consist of small battle reports, thoughts on how the army is performing and musings about possible changes. Feel free to chip in with any advice and criticism as we go along. I have already had some excellent advice from Hashmal through Warseer.

Enough rabbiting, on to the current 1750 list:

Baron Sathonyx

Haemonculus: Liquifier Gun (rides with wyches)
Haemonculus

Wracks: 3 Wracks

Trueborn: 3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Trueborn: 3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Warriors: 5 Warriors, Blaster
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Warriors: 5 Warriors, Blaster
Venom with extra Splinter cannon


Warriors: 5 Warriors, Blaster
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Wyches: 8 Wyches, Hydra Gauntlets, Haywire grenades
Hekatrix, Venom Blades
Raider, Flickerfield

Hellions: 18 Hellions

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

So there you have it, comes to 1748 at the last count.

I run it a couple of ways depending on mission, deployment and opponents. The Baron is the lynchpin of the list in many ways, helping with choice of going first or second, giving stealth and move though cover to the Hellions mob and also making them troops. This unit once powered up can cause havoc anywhere through the amount of attacks it can generate.

The Haemonculus and wracks are basically pain token donators to the Baron and Hellions. In the right circumstances the Hellions and Baron will have FnP and FC at the end of the movement phase of my first turn. This is important as their primary role at this point is to provide a cover save to the rest of the army. Get them strung out in front of the venoms, with 50% of them in cover to get the stealth bonus and provide a 4+ to the venoms, wfich provide a 4+ to the Raider and Ravagers. Ideal scenario ofcourse and not always possible but it's what I am for.

The trueborn are suicide tank hunters, with the warriors also capable of joining in with AT, although I have learned never to trust a single darklight shot. These units provide true duality to the army, pop armour with the darklight and mow down infantry with SC fire.

The wyches are the tarpit/assault element of the list. If I want something tied up and not shooting at me, these girls do the job. I use Hydra gauntlets and the venom blade to try and generate as many wounds as possible on the enemy. I firmly believe in making the opponent role as many saves as possible. The haywire grenades are for if they run into a walker.

Ravagers are the primary source of AT in the list and I run them with flickerfields as sometimes I don't want to give my opponent a cover save from my own army, and therefore they may be a bit exposed. However if they take out what they shoot at then they've done their job anyway.

So thats the basics, I'll get some more down as we move along, Hope you like it.

Sounds good.

My thoughts on this intially.

18 hellions is a big expensive unit and will draw a ton of fire.

To be a bit more efficient, you might consider dropping 3 of them bringing them down to 15, which is still a big unit.

Hydra gauntlets bythemselves are hit or miss. I would also drop them. With those points free, I think you can squeeze in a venom for the wracks to fly around and provide more supporting AI fire without do drastically affecting your army overall.

The wracks and extra haemi can still donate paint tokens.

Anyhoo, good luck on the tourney circuit. I am venturing into it myself as best I can in Texas.

Gar I think the hellions WANT to draw fire with the baron they get a 3+ coversave and with such a big unit they don't care much if they lose a couple.

Looks like a tight list.

The only thing I would say is that a lot of uk tournaments state if you use a character hq you are not allowed another hq choice. It may lead to you changing your list more often that you'd like. Just a thought!

@ General Smooth.

Right, I get that. my point was dropping a couple figures here and there and you get another venom without affecting the overall army very much.

its just my thoughts for what they are worth.

Interesting thoughts there about the Hellions. The size of the Hellion unit is one area that I am still toying around with.
In many ways the bigger the unit the better as they do tend to draw a lot of fire, which ofcourse, is one of their functions. With a 3+ cover save and FnP I am generally quite happy to see them take fire especially from bigger guns which should be pointing at my Venoms or Ravagers. In that respect the bigger the unit the better for avoiding leadership tests, at it's current size it needs 5 casualties to force a test. If the unit is out of rapid fire range, and in cover then that is pretty hard to force.
I still have not figured out the optimum size of the unit. It really does not need to be the size it is to give the rest of the army a screening save, however it can and does perform other functions later in the game. So the larger the unit starts out the greater it's chances of surviving to harrass tanks, tarpit units and hold objectives.
I feel that anything less than 16 Hellions is too small, the unit with the Baron needs to be at least 17 to force the 5 casualty requirement, but after vthat I am undecided if the points could be better used elsewhere, for example another blasterborn in one of the venoms.

Why keep the second Haemonculus naked?
If I am reading you correctly, he is only there to give the Baron and his Hellions Feel No Pain, but once that unit leaves him in the dust, it seems like you just plan to leave him behind the rest of the army. That seems like a waste to me.

If you give the Wracks and Haemonculus Hexrifles, you could have a sniper unit that could do something besides hanging around holding objectives or eating bullets after they've spread the love/pain.

I'd drop a few Hellions to pay for it, in the same way GAR suggested.

good idea spaana. Hex rifles have the advantage of range but I gotta say i love the liuifier gun and venom blade for the same points though it does get them a bit close to the action.

when I was running a large hellion group I had 17 and it did a ton of damage. I then dropped them down to 14 and I a little less, but not much less.

With the added venom, now you don't need so many hellions, you can easily soften up your taget with venom fire and now your opponent has to chose between the hellions or the venom, guaranteeing one survives a little while longer or has to be targeted by a separate unit.

just some food for thought.

Hex rifles are good. I don't use them personally, but in a list like this they could be very useful

Actually, it would be kinda fun to take a couple Hexrifle Haemonculae and use 'em as harassment units. 130 points of irritation might be enough to distract your opponent enough to leave him open to a crippling strike...

Spanna, you read it absolutely correctly. The Haemonculus and the wracks do nothing more than hang around hiding in cover, sitting on an objective which I will have placed handily near or in my deployment zone in objective missions. I also try and get them behind a building out of LOS to make it even more frustrating for the opponent, he's now got to travel across the board to get them, unless he uses ordinance ofcourse. Go to ground for a 3+ save and it's an annoying little unit that poses no threat to the opponent but he will have to expend time and effort to drop. Same principle in KP games, time and effort to destroy a unit that poses no threat. Really I don't care either way what happens to these 4 models at the minute, if they live then good they have got an objective or saved me 2 KP. If they die then they will have taken fire that could have gone elsewhere.

Never tried Hexrifles myself, but if I drop 1 hellion then I could get the sitting Haemonculus with 1. Just not sure on the reliability of 1 single shot weapon, somebody ran the maths somewhere and it came to about 12% to kill a 4W M/c with the Hex rifle. I'll give 1 a try and see how it goes.

The other Haemonculus has the Liquifier for drive by flamings from the Wyches raider. That won't ever change.

Hexrifle odds Not even 12%! its a probability of .14 or 14% of WOUNDING a daemon prince (read any 4 wound creature). That's a one in 6.75 chance.

It then needs to roll a 5 or 6 to die outright. This means a 0.049 or 4.9% chance of killing out right. This is a 1 in 20 shots.

Add to the fact that you will never roll to kill outright if the wound you inflicted was the last wound. So that goes up to one in 25 shots.

With the hexrifle you are adding to the distraction especially if there are multiwounds about. But don't expect it to actually do much for you. The opponent just has to keep telling themselves its rubbish and forcing themselves to ignore it = distraction.

IMO they are almost never worth the points but maybe here as this unit does nearly nothing for you as is.

kenny3760 wrote:

Never tried Hexrifles myself, but if I drop 1 hellion then I could get the sitting Haemonculus with 1. Just not sure on the reliability of 1 single shot weapon, somebody ran the maths somewhere and it came to about 12% to kill a 4W M/c with the Hex rifle. I'll give 1 a try and see how it goes.

Don't expect it to outright glass MCs. Treat it as a normal harassment sniper weapon than can occasionally do something mean to Castellan Crowe or MCs, and it'll treat you good.

kenny3760 wrote:

The other Haemonculus has the Liquifier for drive by flamings from the Wyches raider. That won't ever change.

I wouldn't expect you to. The one thing better than people you don't like on fire is people you don't like melting.

I've typed up a recent battle report in word with photos inserted into it. Does anyone know the best way of getting this into this thread. Thought I would be able to cut and paste, the text transfers ok but not the pics.

Pictures will have to be hosted via a website and inserted in using the IMG and /IMG tags (or the Image button above). You can't cut and paste them in as nearly every forum in existence is simply a redirect tool when it comes to images.

Completed the battle report.

https://thedarkcity.forummotion.com/t654-kenny-3760-v-chaos-1750-points#6134

It's the first time I've ever done one, so heopfully it's understandable. Any thoughts on how it went then let me know. Looking over it I can see a couple of glaring errors.
I'm off to France on Friday morning for 10 days, white water kayaking so things will be a bit slow for a while. When I get back I'll go through the deployment strategies I use for different missions/enemies/setups, and it would be good if you guys could give me some feedback on them, see what I'm doing wrong, what I can improve.

This is all building to a couple of bigger tournaments this year with a couple of smaller ones inbetween, I am aiming to win one of them. Big ask but hopefully I can do it.

Made a couple of changes to my list for a game against my mates Nids last night.

List was

Baron Sathonyx

Haemonculus: Liquifier Gun (rides with incubi)
Haemonculus

Wracks: 3 Wracks

Incubi: 4 Incubi
Venom with extra Splinter Cannon


Trueborn: 4 Trueborn, 4 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Trueborn: 3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Warriors: 5 Warriors, Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Warriors: 5 Warriors, Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Wyches: 8 Wyches, Haywire grenades
Hekatrix, Venom Blades
Raider, Flickerfield

Hellions: 17 Hellions

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield


So I dropped one unit of warriors with venom, and the blasters from the remaining 2 units. I dropped 1 hellions and the hydra gauntlets from the wyches.
In return I added 1 blaster trueborn to one unit taking it to 4 and added in a unit of 4 incubi with venom.

Reasoning:
Single darklight shots are unreliable, (only 0.33 chance of pens on AV 11 or glancing anything above), so warriors lost theirs. This focus's the 2 remaining units on infantry killing with the possibility of 22 splinter shots instead of hoping to damage a tank/transport with the single darklight shot. Removes a bit of duality from the list but I think it's worth it.

I put anoth blaster born in 1 unit to increase the likelyhood of significant damage to a tank from this unit. It will become my suicide tank hunting unit, the unit that goes for the must destroy enemy AV.

In recent games I found the lack of power weapons an issue. Sometimes you just need to clear out some elite troops and there was nothing in the list to do it in HtH. The Incubi should help here. The LG Haemi will ride with them to provide some thinning out capabilities along with the venom before the Incubi step in and finish the target off. The FnP from the haemi will also make them more resilient if the need to step in against non power weaponed foes. No grenades might be an issue but there are ways round this. Tie the unit up with wyches and then next turn pile the incubi in for free hits on the unit is one way.

So overall I have lost 2 darklight weapons, 1 hellion and a unit of 5 warriors.
I have introduced some hard hitting HtH with the incubi, better defined the remaining warrior units purpose and significantly upped the chances of 1 trueborn unit completeing it's designated task.

Worked pretty well against the Nids last night, 2 mawlocs, trygon, 3 tervigons 3 x 2 Hiveguard, 11 genesteelers and a multitude of gaunts/gants (over 70 at one point). My mate uses the tervigons ability to give catalyst to units fairly significantly, his gaunts gat poison attacks with re-rolls, all of which makes them a bit more resilient and dangerous than your average gaunt.

Played Seize ground with 5 objectives which I won 1-0 when the game ended on T5. If it had gone on he would have been tabled in T6 so although it looks close, the result was never in danger. In fact I could have had it 3-0 in T5 but held back in case it did go T6.

Any comments on the changes, are they a step in the right direction or not.

Ok a wee bit of a change of pace here as I have entered a 1500 point tournament towards the end of August. I'll be playing a few games at this level in the lead up to this event so with that in mind I have came up with the following at the 1500 level.

Baron Sathonyx

Haemonculus: Stinger Pistol

Wracks: 4 Wracks

Trueborn: 3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Trueborn: 3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Trueborn: 3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Warriors: 5 Warriors, Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Warriors: 5 Warriors, Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Hellions: 16 Hellions
Helliarch with Agoniser

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

1500 on the nose.

It's a bit of a step to an even more shoot em up style list. The removal of the wyches and the incubi mean there is only the hellions capable of taking anyone on in HtH. Obviously this is a bit of a problem if I need to go there but I still believe with the firepower and mobility in the list that I can take down most opponents from a distance.

Breaks down as 18 Darklight shots on 6 platforms, 60 poison shots at 36", 36 poison shots at 18" and another 20 possible poison shots depending on movement.

Each of the darklight platforms has 3 shots on it so, I am counting on each of them at least glancing whatever they fire at. Suppressing the enemy is the least I want each of these units to do. I expect to see plenty of mech, inc IG and BA, Grey Knights will be there in force along with a couple of our craftworld cousins and a sprinkling of longfang SW's.

Same basic principles apply, get the baron and hellions charged up with PT's as soon as possible. This unit provides a cover save to the army to start with using the barons stealth to gain a 3+ cover themselves. Use the darklight to pop transports, terminators (GK's) or burst some FnP dev squads (I'm looking at you BA's), use the splinter shots to hit infantry until they die. And thats it really, nothing very complicated about this army. The tricky part is going 1st or 2nd and how to deploy, the baron helps here.

I've got a game set up for tomorrow night, don't know what I'm facing but I'll try and grab a few pics and do a quick Bat rep.

Well last nights game was a total disaster.

I was up against Orks:
2 Big Meks, 1 with KFF, 1 with Burna

4 Truk Boyz units, the Big Meks went in 2 of these. All had Nobs with Big Choppas

2 Deff Dreads

3 units of 3 Killa Kans

3 units of 5 Lootas

Playing Capture and Control, Pitched Battle, Iwon roll and took 1st turn. No LOS blocking terrain.

I played like a complete donkey during this game and really made an mess of things.
Set up as usual, Hellions and Baron out front and everything else behind.
He set up as a castle with the KFF Big Mek in the middle giving everything a 4+ cover save.

Now the bad stuff. Having set up for an alpha strike I then on 1st turn decided it would be a good idea to flat out my blasterborn to my right flank and advance my Ravagers behind the Hellions into 24" range of the castle. I have no idea what I was playing at but I lost the game right there.
Instead of having 18 darklight shots picking on 1 side of the blob I've now got 9 (3 Ravagers) facing the whole thing. I only destroy 1 Kan and immobilise a Truk. The truk created a bit of a road jam so was actually pretty helpful.
In return I lose 1 ravager and have another unable to shoot.
2nd turn, blaster born have moved so far I can't get them into range, 1 ravager has to high tail it out of there as it can't shoot and the other manouvers to get a cover save and fires ineffectively at Kans. I also decide that the Baron and hellions should multi assault the 3 Kan units (wtf) as the have re-roll to wound from drugs and have 2 PT's. Can't use re-roll to wound against walkers and spread my self too thin to do any damage. Lose a couple of Hellions but hold. Decide to hit and run as I can't hurt them in the next assault phase, but this leaves them free to shoot next turn, and promptly take down another Ravager.
After this it was a bit of a struggle to claw anything back, I really don't know what I was thinking.

High points were definately the Hellions, destroyed 2 units of Lootas, a Truk and all it's contents, another unit of Boyz and another Truk. Infact on T6 they were contesting the Ork objective.

Low points were a complete and utter lack of thought as too what I was doing, I'm concerned about how I played and hope that it was a one off. My opponent played the right way, castling up to get the 4+ KFF save on everything, but really that should not have mattered as proper movement and target selection should have limited his ability to hit back after T1. Moving into their firing range when I have 12" more on lances, plain crazy.

Hopefully it's a blip and I'll get back on track.

So after a bit of reflection I decided to throw this list out to the community for some feedback. Thor had some very interesting and useful suggestions on the list and the choices within it, enough to make me think about the cost of the Barons gang and the role they play in the army.

I intend to try running a list without them next week and use some beastmasters instead, along with some slight changes to darklight selections. The beasts are a step into the unknown for me in this edition, never used them so far. In the last codex I ran a unit of 4 beasts and master as a small, fast distraction unit which frequently got into combat and caused some damage, due to slipping under the radar. I don't really expect that to happen with the unit I'm proposing to take. 50 attacks on the charge and a total of 28 wounds makes it a unit which must be dealt with.

I've been a bit lax in keeping this up recently, too much overtime at work and other committments, but I have had a couple of games recently where I tried out the beastmaster unit.
For me at this stage it just doesn't feel right. I can see the potential of the unit but I guess I am so used to the hellions I found it difficult to get the army working together. In the future it is something I will be experimenting with, but I feel it probably would work better based around a WWP list, which is how I intend to try running it. I don't have the time to get a list together and get used to it at present.

So for the tournament in 2 weeks time I'll be running this list

Baron Sathonyx

Haemonculus: Liquifier Gun

Wracks: 3 Wracks

Trueborn: 3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Trueborn: 3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Trueborn: 3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters
Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Warriors: 5 Warriors, Blaster, Venom with extra Splinter cannon

Warriors: 5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider with FF

Hellions: 15 Hellions, inc Helliarch with Agoniser

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

Ravager: 3 Dark Lances, Flickerfield

No real suprises I guess but it won again during the week against a Mech SM list, no real suprise there. Once again the wracks prooved there worth in the list by hiding out of LOS and then marching onto an objective in the last turn.
The Baron and hellions unit became fearless due to the extra pain token from combat drugs and caused havoc all through the game.

So a game next week against IG or sisters, don't know which yet and then another game against Orks the following week before I set off.
These 2 games provide a good contrast in styles. One an army that outranges and probably outguns me and the other an army that wants to close on me as quick as possible. This will give me an opportunity to practice different tactics, although in both games I anticipate trying to focus my effort on one flank to isolate part of each army from being able to strike at me.

Sad to hear the beasts are not your cup of tea.

Just as a consideration;

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/386597.page;jsessionid=34650F4B6C21B19D25A23B310E3022D0

That's a batrep I did a week or so ago, with Beastmasters in a very speed and shooting oriented DE list. I just want to show how durable they are, how fast they are, and how they can still work within a Raider Rush build as well (*cough*better*cough*) than Hellions

Look forward to the batreps.

Had just had a look at that rep Thor. I can see how well you have got them working, definately viable. How many points was that game, I'm guessing 1850?
I can see the potential of the beast unit, I just don't think I have got the hang of them yet, one for the future though. Have you tried multiple beast units through a WWP?

That was a 2000 point game (don't tell my opponent though, I was running under points since I did all the math in my head. I think my list was closer to 1900).

I've done multiple Beast units through WWP.

Currently my 1850 WWP only runs one squad of Beasts w. Baron (used to be Hellions + Baron...and later actually Incubi+Baron, go figure) and a lot of squads of Wyches on foor. I've become really addicted to the Beasts+Grenades angle. If I was to field my WWP at 2000+ though I'd probably opt for extra Beasts, yes, even minus Grenades they are an excellent unit that keeps moving upwards in my competitive opinion the more I field them.

Quote :

Incubi+Baron

How'd that work out?

It wasn't shabby, though it didn't redefine the game either. 3+ cover and 3+ armor basically made my opponents more willing to hose me down with small arms fire which was annoying, but at least in h2h there was a lot of debate of whether to swing for Incubi or the Baron which was nice to see.

I'd probably be willing to do it again, certainly in friendly play, in competitive I think there are better options.