Wednesday 27 October 2010

Where next with my army?

As already stated my next tournament outing will be the Caledonian Uprising which is being held in order to raise money for the Scottish ETC team. The army restrictions are very similar to that Open War 14. 1750 points, no special characters ect. Which means I do not plan to change my Open War 14 Army to drastically (which can be found here) however tweaks will have to be made but from where? I have only 7 weeks before the army list is due in so not a lot of time for play testing.

If I go through my list I know it isn't an ultra competitive list but I don't want it to be. I love using Thunderwolves but they do take up a lot of points when coupled with my Thunderlord. But lets face the facts when they hit something it dies. The only thing they have failed against is Mephiston and a squad of death company and that was when my opponent through misunderstanding attached him to the squad.

My thoughts however lead me to think that 4 Thunderwolves might be over kill in many situations so there is my first thought on what to take out.

A rune priest is a must for a wolf army. As I learnt in Open war the ability to block 50% of all psychic powers. I certainly won't be getting rid of a rune priest but do I want to bolster him? I certainly liked the idea of the 3 Rune Priest army that Adam from Space wolves Grey ran at open war and although I wouldn't go that far a two Rune Priest army is certainly tempting.

My troops won't be touched bar to remove a special weapon if I do attempt the 2 Rune Priest army so I can make sure I have mobility on the table to counter any psychic attacks (which clearly I didn't do on Saturday). I realise many wolf players favour small more mobile packs in razorbacks but I love the knowledge that when coupled with a wolf standard 9-10 Grey Hunters will destroy pretty much anything.

So that leaves me with two things to change my Heavy support and my elites.

Long fangs for me are one of the best units of the game. There are many combinations you can have, they are cheap and if nothing else you can put out 5 missile launchers that will cause any army a note of panic.

So finally I come to my scouts. If you have read my entry on Open War they caused me a few issues both through my stupidity in forgetting to bring them on AND in the inability to roll for them to come on. They are also the most fragile unit in my army. 4+ save makes a big difference BUT they have the outstanding ability of removing from play those nasty high AV artillary pieces that are often placed at the rear of the board. If the melta gun and plasma pistol fails melta bombs rarely do.

So a plan of action is formed. I am going to be putting away the mantra of 'Never leave the fang without some scouts' and move towards the more big guns you have the better. My Scouts cost me a combined total of 125 points, add on to that the 5 points from the rune priests melta bombs which if I am honest were added on purely to make up the points. I know have 130 points for an extra squad of long fangs or some other heavy support possibly a vindicator.

4 Long Fangs + a squad leader would stretch to 75 points leaving me with 55 points to add on for weapons which would give me a lascannon (25 points) and 3 missile launchers at 10 points a piece.

OR I could add on the removal of a thunderwolf + his melta bombs and another grey hunter which are only there for wound allocation to provide 200 points for additions with that I could have a Rune Priest for 100 points. Which would of course leave me with 100 points 15 points or one Grey Hunter short of a Vindicator. Is the loss of a plasma gun toting Grey hunter worth a vindicator? Difficult but I will soon see I guess.

Tomorrow I will be helping Andy and Gav test their Free Booters doubles list however following that I will have 7 weeks to play test the two armies.

As normal constructive criticism is gladly welcome.

16 comments:

  1. What do they hold against special characters? They used to be uber but these days they're more and more just part of the list.

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  2. Did you have many issues with your troops all being Ld8? I understand that you don't want to change your troops but what about trimming them down and including a wolf guard with a combi-melta (to compensate for the loss of the 2nd meltagun). Yes 4 TWC + a Lord is overkill in my opinion. 3 would be enough.
    1 Rune priest if enough to counter most psykers if placed properly in the table. 24'' is very wide. Not sure about the weapons on your 2nd Longfang unit. I think you got enough anti infantry stuff on your list and maybe you should focus them more for anti-tank duties.
    And please no Vindicators, I hate these guys :P

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  3. I don't understand it, removing Special Characters makes it a different game - 40K Lite. It also removes some really good builds such as Loganwing, Vulkan lists and that new DE guy who makes Hellions scoring. I think the organisers realise how overpower Footdar is and so had to get rid of Eldrad to compensate ;-)

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  4. I love my Long Fangs but I'm thinking about dropping them for my next tournament. It's also at Maelstrom and the last time I was there they had loads of LoS blocking scenery so I need something that is able to move and fire...

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  5. Do you hate Vindicators as an Ork player or just in general? ;-)

    Not sure about Mike but I had lots of problems with Ld8 at the tournament. Stay tuned to find out what went wrong and what I'm going to do about it (now I feel like I've hijacked Mike's post to advertise mine, it's like the trailers at the cinema)

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  6. Can't say I have ever had many issued with Ld8 troops. They are normally kept in the rhino until they are in bolt pistol range, one round of firing then up and at em. With and they shall know no fear unless they are shot to pieces there isn't a lot of leaderships checks you have to make. I'm not sure what the mathammer is for having +1 leadership however.

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  7. I believe its for more variety. According to the lads who run Open War in Open War 13 every Ork army had Gaz and every Eldar army had Eldrad.

    I like it.

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  8. You certainly give me food for thought,

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  9. Sorry, I meant I hate them because I dont think they are very effective. And I am an IG player dammit :P How am I going to get rid of the orky stigma?
    One more thing. I am not complaining or anything but sometimes it's hard for me to understand who is writing the posts. Maybe it's the language barrier or something. Could you please include the name of the poster in each article if it's not too hard. Thanks :)

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  10. Once an Ork always an Ork! :-D

    The poster's name is after the article in grey writing in a grey background (helpful I know) We'll get our technical expert (ie Andy) to see if he can move it and make it clearer...

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  11. Ooops, you are absolutely right, how could I miss that? Maybe the letters are too small and I am to old to read them :P Ok, so I obviously missed that but I don't think it's an issue, it is clearly there I don't think many other people will have the same problem (I blame the fact that I am poorly right now).

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  12. Technical power ftw! I've moved the location of the posdter to the top below the post title, Hope that's clearer, it took me a while to see where it was originally too!

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  13. Meh, don't mind me, my brain is not functioning too well these days. But it's much better now, much easier to see. What happens with this replies, do they keep getting smaller and smaller until they reach sub-atomic size?

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  14. It's weird because I think that the Special Characters in the 5th edition codices actually increase the variety of builds available.

    Personally, it doesn't effect me as I don't run any SCs but I'd be annoyed if I'd shelled out on a Loganwing army and it was my only army and I wasn't allowed to use it.

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  15. Sounds like we need to do an experement in order to find out.

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  16. If I am stupid or if the replies get smaller and smaller? I guess this answers the first part of the question...

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