image courtesy of Team Snake Eyes
So Rob and I had a match this past week and he asked me what he thought of his list. I guess he has some tournaments upcoming and he wanted some advice on tweaks. Obviously not completely sold on his list…. So.. I’ve thought about it and here are those thoughts in their current state of maturization..
His initial list for the match.
Codex:SM [operation vulkan drop]
Hq: vulkan
Hq: libby with nullzone and avenger
Troops: 10 man tact squad with MM, Melta and pod
Troops: 10 man tact squad with MM, Melta and pod
Troops: 10 man tact squad with MM, Melta and pod
Troops: 5 man tact squad with las/plas razorback
Elites: ironclad in pod
Elites: dread in pod
Elites: 5 man terminator squad with 3x TH/SS , 2x Lclaws
Fast Attack – Van Vets with jump packs and a TH
Heavy: vindicator
The match was 5 objectives, playing the Eldar battle mission ‘Outflank’. He kept everything in reserve save the vindicator and the razorback and squad. I pushed through with my LR straight at his vindicator. Sadly, I ended up being an inch out of assault range (terrain test for assault) and I ended up losing the entire squad to the pie plate and added support of the razorback (yes, also after not making one dang invuln save too).
However, this is pretty much summed up his killing for the rest of the match. He was able to wittle down another terminator squad and my tacticals, but I ended up tabling him on turn 6. My outflanking speeders took care of the vindicator and razorback. My predators and terminators were able to stifle the dreads and eventually take them down. And the tacticals were no match for heavy bolters and terminators. Our terminator squads actually ended up killing each other, was pretty funny actually. We both had a TH/SS left and both took out the other. Vulkan eventually fell to the torrent of fire from the dakka preds (of which Moros calls worthless for DA – BAH! I say)
So what went wrong for Rob. Well, here are my thoughts. He was playing his list like a Sam-Hainn Eldar. Hoping to sneak in towards the end of the game onto objectives and ‘steal’ the win out from under their opponent’s nose. If rob wants to do this, there really is no reason to have a vindicator as it draws so much fire and since he is only going to have 2 vehicles on the table on turn 1 (enemy has first turn) that’s a Big problem. I just felt like his list had a bunch of toys he wanted to use from the SM codex without a set theme to the army. He almost ended up pulling out the win on me since most of this big stuff came in our turns 4 and 5 which had me scrambling to push him off the objectives. Going to turn 6 was the end of him, he just didn’t have enough to deal with all my firepower. This fact, worries me. In a competitive setting, you can’t simply hope for a stolen victory. You need to own your opponent in order to score maximum points. This also, relies completely on the mission and opponent. If he had been playing a horde army, nids, orks, etc. those pods could not have deployed anywhere close to the objectives.
So.. I’ve done some rethinking of Rob’s list.. and.. here’s what I have come up with.. thanks to the new CLUB owned SM codex I was able to throw together my own version of a vulkan list. I think it still keeps the ‘flavor’ of his original list. What do you think?
Codex: SM [spear of vulkan] 1850
HQ: Vulkan [190]
Troops: 10man tactical squad with MM, Melta, Combi-flamer + Pod [220]
Troops: 10man tactical squad with MM, Melta, Combi-flamer + Pod [220]
Troops: 10man tactical squad with MM, Melta + Pod [210] (vulkan goes here giving you a flamer on this squad as well)
Elites: Ven Dread + Flamer + Pod [210]
Elites: Ironclad + Flamer + Pod + teleport homer [190]
Elites: 10-man Terminator squad (10x TH/SS) [400]
Fast Attack: Land Speeder – Heavy Flamer + MM [70]
Fast Attack: Land Speeder – Heavy Flamer + MM [70]
Fast Attack: Land Speeder – Heavy Flamer + MM [70]
So here’s my thinking.. podding/deepstriking all over the place. So on turn 1 we are still getting our 2x dreads on the field and one of the tact’s pods. Terminators, speeders can either come in off the teleport homer or just deepstrike where needed. Here we are trying to maximize what vulkan can give us. Everything is Twin linked or master crafted. People are going to struggle dealing with that 10man terminator squad and the speeders while there are 30 tacts up in your face and the dreads. I like it. Even though it’s a little light on troop squads. Its against the grain of the MSU’s builds and it will allow for quick adaptation as the game progresses.
Thoughts? Flames?
Scaling to 2k, I would probably either add a libby. Or drop a speeder and add another 10man tact squad.
I can't give you much in the way of tactics as a complete newbie but I will say that Vulkan is a beast and anything with termies and flames is good.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you warflake, Vulkan is a beast. 2+/3++ is no joke. specially when he can absorb some wounds for a squad, makes him real nice. He has to watch out for terminators though, but his job is not to take down terminators... that's what your master crafted hammernators are for.
ReplyDeletethat's another thing I forgot to mention in the article, was when I played Rob, he did not use his HQs to effectively throw wounds on from the squad. he was taking all the wounds on the squad, which was causing him to take leadership after leadership. and leaving the HQ there by his lonesome.
It was a great game. I only had 2tacts in pods though. Onto to the list . I play the vindie and las plas as an alt deployment late game objetive stealer and the vindie draws fire that would other wise go into pods and squads. It also enables me to have 4units turn 1 and start to threaten. think in our match i played too agressive. I should have used the vv to attack your dakka preds i so underestimated them. I also should have used my libby tac squad to reinforce the back squad insteda of feeding them to your termies. I think you need pwr wpns on the sgts as it helps against t3 gimps and with MSU's a plenty. I wish I had the speeders to play but i think they die too quick . When I played all pods I was having to deep strike backwards which defats the point of pods which is why i added the msu squad backed up by the vindie. I think i got "cute against you. I palyed for the tie not the win.
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