Pinning strat ?

I guess it may not be the best strategy, but I was thinking about something like pinning spam.

At the moment I found the following weapons with pinning effects:

- shrieker canon (harlequin)
- hexrifle (sniper special rule)
- necrotoxin missile (razorwing)
- grav talon (reaver)
- baleblast (mandrake)

Any other ideas? feel free to comment.

Hmmmm.. Never tryed and relied on pinning because of the fact that alot of armies have ld 8 and above thell always pass. And grav talons may not be worth sacrificing reavers lol. Maybe if mandrakes had baleblast without that stupid restirction of a pain token already present. Just maybe ill use them but we have to wait until the next codex of ours comes. Expiriment thats what i do

A pinning army works pretty well.

The key is to bring a lot of warlocks and roll for Horrify. The -3 leadership is very important for creating opportunities for your opponent to fail.

Now the only problem becomes Fearless squads. How do you get rid of that? Bring Wraithfighters, who come with the Terrify psychic power. This removes fearless from squads, and causes them to take a morale check.

Cast -3 Leadership on something, cast Terrify, watch their entire army run away or be pinned.

I've proxy-ed it once or twice. Its hilariously fun.

Not as effective as the warlocks, but if you don't want allies, you could try using your transports as sacrificial support. Torment grenade launchers, flicker fields, and maybe... maybe a shock prow or chain snares? -1 leadership, leadership test to assault. Since you're in their face anyway you can run over them with one of the other two weapons.

I doubt TMGL are cumulative but if they are it could be pretty effective.

Expletive Deleted wrote:

I doubt TMGL are cumulative but if they are it could be pretty effective.

Sadly they're not. The TMGL rules say "enemy unit that is within 6" of one or more.."

I've been toying with this say kind of list concept for a little while, but in all honestly i think it's much more likely to be effective with a primary eldar force with dark eldar support. Eldar bring the hemlocks who can terrify and have the mindshock pods to force rerolls to morale and pinning tests, cheap sniper troops and warlocks with the potential to give -3 leadership. Throw in some DE allies (haemonc with a hexrifle, a couple of 3 man wrack units in raiders with TMGLs and splinterborn with a venom with trophies to support the warlock casting) and you've got a coherent and potentially very frustrating force.

Thx all for the feedback. Unfortunately I don't own any CW eldar models to try this, but maybe I will proxy some warlocks and snipers as allies during a next game with friends.

Dark Eldar primary can do a fine job of inflicting pinning tests, but the problem is the rules make pinning rather unreliable, and very little of what we have is things we'd take normally.

Here is a curious question. Has anyone thought of trying strafing runs? Can we even do this strategy? Seems how since we have mobility it might be a decent thing to try.

I'm not sure how you could implement strafing as a concept in 40k.

Cron's might manage something similar given how many fliers they can field, but generally in 40k you want as many guns on the board as possible at all times. Due to the balanced point value on each side, there's not much that is so brutal that you can afford to having it doing nothing for significant periods. With our puny count of at most 3 aircraft, and reserve rules forcing deployment of units, you're going to be at a significant disadvantage on the ground while waiting for your air support.

I've used 3 vendetta IG lists, but generally only with significant amounts of infantry and high av hiding behind an aegis. That gives the survivability and the firepower to be able to hold you own until you get the vendettas in (usually on turn 2 due to an astropath) and they can go to work on high priority targets. DE aren't really built for 3 fliers i don't think, but maybe others have tried it and had success. Interested to hear if that's the case.

I have seen the rule in the BRB that mentions a strafing run. it gives the pinning special rule. But good point about our flyers being so little.

Ah, you mean the USR. We don't get that sadly. Some of the FW fliers do and I think one of the Ork ones has it. That's all i can think of right now tho.

We can grab necrotoxin missiles which would let fliers pin.

Ahhh ty. Heh that is one idea I can toss out.

I have seen the rule in the BRB that mentions a strafing run. it gives the pinning special rule. But good point about our flyers being so little. wrote:

Well, you can only implement it with Razorwing Formation in Apocalypse.

Has anyone ever tried NS Raider, 9 Mandrakes, Haemonculus? 255pts, but 18 pinning shots plus whatever you give your Haemy.
Could be fun right?

Laughingcarp wrote:

Has anyone ever tried NS Raider, 9 Mandrakes, Haemonculus? 255pts, but 18 pinning shots plus whatever you give your Haemy.
Could be fun right?

Why do you need the raider. Put them in good cover, and give the heami a liqu. gun for defence, and maybe a hexrifel for some more pining chances.

I'm sure I had a great reason when I wrote it in, but can't remember it now. Only thought is to get them where they need to go, 'cause 18" doesn't exactly cover much of the board.

The Stormtalon and the Nephilim Jetfighter both have the strafing run special rule, which gives +1 Bs to shots taken against ground-based targets.