Space Marines - Knowing our enemy - Codex discussion

Slave Posts : 2 Join date : 2013-09-29

Hey, guys. I've been a long time lurker and I'd posted a few times under an account I can't seem to log into anymore :p I just got home from playing the new marine codex and I thought I'd share.

First, I will say that I was playing Eldar as a primary detachment, but I had brought my dark eldar buddies as allies. I might have done a little better if my primary/allies were reversed, as I would have had more poison shots... but to be honest, I think I would have been screwed Razz

A couple of points:

- Thunderfire Cannons are nasty! He brought two of them and placed them behind ruins that he had bolstered with techmarines (he had 4, including the 2 accompanying the thunderfire cannons). So the cannons had 3+ cover saves. Also, due to terrain, he was able to hit me using indirect fire before I could bring much of my arms to bear.

- The thunderfire cannon can fire a round that is Str 6, AP 5... which just murdered any of my Kabalite warriors in the open. Even when I had a pain token on them, the Instant Death rule just ignored it. When they were in cover, I still lost most of them due to the air burst round.

- Why are they more nasty than before? Barrage. They can now fire indirectly and thus have more options. Also, using the Barrage placement of blast markers (like the old Thud Gun), if he got close with the first shot, he was bound to hit a lot of units. We aren't sure if we did the blat placement right... check out the barrage rule in the main rulebook: it does say place each "shot" after the first marker adjacent to the first. Is this for each "weapon" or each "shot" from a multi-shot weapon. Who knows...

- Counter Point to the thunderfire cannons... If I had brought more venoms, they would have been bye-bye by round 2. Even with dark lances, I'd have been hard pressed to get enough wounds to get past his 3+ cover saves. Venoms it is... Also, if I'd have had more wave serpents, I could have had more luck using the serpent shield to inflict Str 7 wounds that ignore cover. I only have 1 at the moment.

- Drop Pod Assault: This is what killed my army. My friend brought 2 five man assault squads, stripped off their jump packs and gave them drop pods. The thing about the new codex is that assault squads can now take 2 special weapons, even at only 5 men strong.

- So at the bottom of turn 1, he has dropped two cheap squads and unleashed a total of 4 flamers right in my face. This is not good for any army that is toughness 3 and relies on 4+ or 5+ armor save.

- On top of the flamers, he equipped the drop pods with those missile launchers that nobody uses? He will be using them a lot now. They only have a 12" range, but hello, he dropped them right on my line. The launchers are large blast, Str 5, AP -. The trick is that he didn't target the same units that he did with the flamers (his troops would be too close). He his one unit with the flamers, and another unit farther away with the missile launchers. This was done x2 by turn 1 and was pretty nasty.

- Of course, on my turn 2, I counter attacked and knocked out most of these two units and a drop pod.... but they were throw away units anyway and expected to die!

- On HIS turn 2, his other two drop pods came down (both rolled 3+ for reserve), but this time they were tactical squads, unleashing more flamers (surprise) and double tapping bolters.

After 2 turns of thunderfire cannons and drop-podding flamers and bolters, I didn't have a lot left, honestly. All my dire avengers and scouts were wiped out. My kabalite warriors were wiped out. Thanks to a venerable rifleman dreadnought, my Ravager was down (god DE vehicles are paper-thin compared to the new Eldar ones).

I had success. My dire avengers were effective on the offense. My wraithguard were fearsome and killed their share until a Stormraven shot 4 anti-tank missiles at one squad, and a bike squad with two tech marines closed in with plasma and melta on the other). The wave serpent wasn't touched, and my DE Ravager was wearing down the thunderfire cannons (I needed venoms). My psychic powers were nice.

What I need is more transports. My opponent rightly stated that if everything was in wave serpents, his drop pod assaults would simply have bounced. With my dark eldar allies, if I'd have venoms instead of raiders, I could have taken down his thunderfire cannons quicker with just a weight of wounds. I could have also castled in a corner and made him drop pod in front of my unified army, rather than me going for objectives and spreading myself out a bit.

Anyway, thanks for reading. The new codex brought him a lot, mostly with some points drops, new barrage rules for thundercannons (x2!) and having 2 flamers in assault squads. Subtle changes that caught me off g

uard.

Kabalite Warrior Posts : 227 Join date : 2013-05-24

thanks for the feedback Murphy. I'm going to play against Black Templars this afternoon, and my friend said "i'll bring a lot of drop pods" so I guess he wants to use the same tactics. I think keeping one raider full of warriors in reserve may be the right choice.

scary thoughts. Have suffered the wrath of the thunderfire cannon and its a brilliant anti-light infantry weapon. Two of them is just nasty. So whats the solution to mass drop pod assault and going second? Castling up and smart use of terrain? More reserving of units (obviously has its drawbacks), or just accept that against some builds it will be a hard fight?

Drop pods can only shoot snap shots on arrival. So the large blast is avoidable easily. New tfc are a problem if you dont have a lot of long range poison.

Kabalite Warrior Posts : 227 Join date : 2013-05-24

Played against Black Templars this afternoon. 1500 pts, friendly game.
We only had time to play two turns as my friend had some important family comitments this evening, and unable to avoid them (which was not scheduled).
Here below a quick summary.

His list (green = reserve) - not his competitive one, this one was for fun:
- 5 drop pods with marines inside (6-7 tactical, either with plasma gun, melta gun, or heavy bolter, depending on the units)
- 3 land speeders (typhoon: missile launcher + heavy bolter)
- 1 dreadnought with dual twin linked autocannon
- 3 bikes

My list (green = reserve):
- 2 raiders (NS / SR) with KW (9 rifles + 1 SC)
- 3 venoms (5 HWG wyches)
- 2 ravagers (NS)
- 6 reavers (2 x blasters)
- beasts (3 BM, 10 dogs, 2 birds) + Zathonyx, the evil overlord of doom

Mission: will of the emperor / daylight
Deployment : crap diagonal (but finally a good thing for me when reserves came by)
Drugs: +1 STR

He wins side and 1st turn.

Turn 1: He dropped 3 pods right in front of my 3 venoms (seems he forgot they were full of wyches). The three venoms got wrecked by bolters glancing shots + the dreadnouhgt + a land speeder, and I did emergency disembarkation with the wyches ready to charge him as he was really close. I lost my venoms, and charged through difficult terrain with 5+ save againts overwatch. Then his tacticals were tarpitted and with +1 STR (drugs), and I managed to kill some of them. I won most of the assault (but ATSKNF, etc.. etc...). One unlucky unit of wyches was destroyed. Wyches were meant to go anti tank, they finally go anti infantry which was not bad either.
My beast unit was close to engage turn 1, but even with fleet I made two consecutive crap charge rolls (1+2, and 2+3 when rerolling, 5" was not enough, and my unit was dangerously standing in the open.
The ravagers were too far from his speeders to be a threat, so I used first turn to redeploy (getting 4+ jink save).

Picture 01 - turn 1
Picture 02 - turn 1
Picture 03 - turn 1

Turn 2: He failed his reserve rolls so the two other pods were not allowed to land. He cross fired my beast unit with speeders, dreadnought and bikes, getting rid of half of them, but the other half (4 dogs, 1 bird, two BM and Sathonyx) was still alive with Sathonyx. Close combat: the wyches did their job and managed to finish one unit of marines, granting them a pain token.
My turn: all my reserve came in to play. Two KW raiders fired at the safe remaining marines and one of them finally survived after : 36 twin linked rifle shots + 12 canon snap fire shots. This one deserves a medal!
The reavers came right behind a lone speeder, failed their blaster shots but charged it in the back with hammer of wrath + 18 attacks + the STR bonus from drugs = enough glancing damages to make it wrecked.
The ravagers, now well positioned, destroyed the two other speeders. The Baron and the beasts moved and charged through the pods and killed the entire marine unit in the middle of the table.

Sorry no picture for turn 2...

After discussion what he would have done turn 3: the two other drop pods would have landed in front of my ravagers to full dakka on them, and he would have put some more pressure with the dreadnought + bikes.
On my side, I would have finished his last troops remaining on my side and tried to secure one objective while contesting the other one with motojets or the beasts.

My concluson is reserves help against drop pods. The fact they can launch the pods right in front of / or in the back of our troops / vehicules if they go first, or to keep their troops as "turn 1 arriving reserve" if they go second, means the troops inside the pods are protected against alpha strike in either cases.
But in my case, going second was in fact a chance, as I was able to assault him on my turn 1 due to emergency disembarkation. Wyches are sacrificial, KW are not. If I had made the other choice (all venom in reserve instead of the raiders) I wouldn't have been able to tarpit the tactical squads.
If the pods had landed at a longer distance from my venoms, he would not have been able to use melta, neither rapid fire due to night shields.
All of these "if I did that" are purely speculative, but I think this scenario can be repeated and improved.

PS: and tactical marines don't like close combat Smile

That's awesome feedback, LSK. It has been touched on in other threads, but I think the Chronos is going to be a great answer to drop pod marines.

My mate, who is one of the top players on the tourney scene in the U.K. has just started playing a White Scars bike army. His list fires 66 grav shots in turn one at 1650pts. That is brutal!

Just read Murphy80's post and yeah, i picked up on the drop-pod blast weapon thing too, that shouldn't be able to fire 'til turn after it arrives, right? Also, how can a single stormraven fire 4 missiles in a single turn? Only 2 of the weapons fired by a flyer are allowed to be missiles, in the BRB. Someone let me know if there's a specific rule that lets them do this? Otherwise, looks like you were cheated (unintentionally, possibly) at least twice in this game Murphy.

Wych Posts : 662 Join date : 2013-01-23

The PotMS allows an extra weapon, its debatable if it allows an extra missile
It certainly doesnt allow two!

I need to pay attention to grav shots!

DominicJ wrote:: The PotMS allows an extra weapon, its debatable if it allows an extra missile
It certainly doesnt allow two!

Power of the Machine Spirit says:

Pg40 wrote:: the vehicle can fire one more weapon at its full Ballistic Skill than normally permitted.

The rules for flyers say:

Pg80 wrote:: Zooming Flyers can fire up to four of their weapons using their full Ballistic skill if they have moved at either Combat Speed or Cruising Speed that turn.

So this means that a flyer can fire up to five of their weapons at full BS if they have PotMS. However, missiles carry their own restriction, which is not lifted by PotMS

Pg81 wrote:: A maximum of two missiles can be fired per Shooting phase, and they count towards the number of weapons fired that turn.

Slave Posts : 2 Join date : 2013-09-29

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Good catches on the mistakes from my Space Marine game. I don't blame my friend at all, as we only get a game in every month or so, and we are always using new models and army lists. I don't think he'd ever used the drop pod missile launchers (and I've never encountered them), and our flyers have never shot missiles at each other.

Next time, I might have a few more models left on my shooting phases. I don't think I would have won this game, but I will fare better in the next one.

I realized that I could have done a few things... castling up in a corner, expecting his drop pods, reserving some units, or purchasing more dedicated transports to hole up in. I'll let you all know how it goes next time.

LSK wrote:: The reavers came right behind a lone speeder, failed their blaster shots but charged it in the back with hammer of wrath + 18 attacks + the STR bonus from drugs = enough glancing damages to make it wrecked.

Can't assault out of reserve mate. Or were they deployed already? I missed them in the pictures if they were.

Kabalite Warrior Posts : 227 Join date : 2013-05-24

@RedCorsair: You're completly right, we both made a big mistake here in the heat of the battle as we had limited time to play. Reavers were coming out of reserve and should not have been allowed to assault the land speeder. (Sorry but I haven't taken any pictures for turn 2, only turn 1).

It reminds me I have a question about reserves, and space marines drop pods.
I played again against the Black Templars on 2000 pts game (The Relic)
This time he had 7 drop pods, transporting two dreadnoughts and 5 tactical marines squads.
On the table at the beginning, he had
- 5 land speeders (organized as one squadron of 3, and one squadron of 2)
- 1 dreadnought
- 1 SM squad on foot
So, how do we count squadron in terms of units? did he have 7 units or only 4 units on the table?
In that second case (4 units), he shouldn't have been allowed to bring 7 drop pods in reserve, right?

This time we finished the game with 7 drop pods on the table, granting him 14 stormbolter shots each turn which can aim at different targets. 1 or 2 drop pods can be ignored, 7 is a bit harsh.

Wych Posts : 662 Join date : 2013-01-23

Drop pods dont count to the reserve limit one way or the other
So he had four (or 5 if combat squaded) units able to deploy, and could choose to deploy up to two (or three?) in reserve

Kabalite Warrior Posts : 227 Join date : 2013-05-24

DominicJ wrote:: Drop pods dont count to the reserve limit one way or the other
So he had four (or 5 if combat squaded) units able to deploy, and could choose to deploy up to two (or three?) in reserve

OK, I should have written "he had 7 units within drop pods in reserve".
On turn one before beginning of the game, he had 5 speeders organized as 2 squadrons on the table + 1 SM unit on foot + 1 dreadnought.
The rules say that you may not reserve more than half of the total number of units you have in your army.
And my question was: Was it legit for him to have 7 units in reserve (dropped units) and only 4 active ones on the table, before dropping the first 4 drop pods (half the number he got in reserve)?

No rule book to hand, but I'm sure that Drop pods HAVE TO start in reserve, so the "half the units must..." rule doesn't apply. Units embarked upon their dedicated pods are also thus exempt.
He is certainly allowed to have 7 drop pods in reserve, four other units deployed normally; I'd have to check whether he could, if he wanted, put 2 more of those 4 units in reserve. I think he can.

Don't forget drop pods are snap firing the turn they arrive so at least when he comes in he needs 6's to hit you, then just move out of sight or range if you can or hide in assault.

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