My Army List

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Koumei
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My Army List

Post by Koumei »

Okay, so far I have played 3 games of 40K, all of them Apocalypse. And I was on the winning team for each of them (and even contributed to the victories, I might add). In the most recent one, there were three Ork Stompas and one Mega Stompa, and the victory conditions were "Orks get a point for every stompa that makes it across the board, Imperium gets a point for every stompa wrecked/destroyed".

My Repentias seriously took one out in one round, all on their own. Eviscerators kick arse against vehicles.

Anyway, I was invited to a 750-point tournament. Running over six weeks, it's basically "get as many battles as you can". You win a Point for every battle you lose, and two Points for every one you win. If you play on a Thursday (sadly I can't) then you get a bonus Point, and if your opponent thinks your nemesis model is cool, you get another bonus Point. Five Points can be spent to buy a hex on the map. Whoever has the most hexes at the end (or if they ever hold 1/3 of them) wins the game, getting a trophy and Land Speeder box set.

Nemesis: everyone has to have a single-model nemesis from any army they like. It must be 100 points or more. If it's 150 points or more, you get a free re-roll once per battle. Basically, any time a battle starts, roll 1d6. On a 1 or 2, forget the original objectives, each player gets to add the opponent's nemesis to their team, and it becomes "kill/capture the nemesis".

So, here is my proposed list. I would like critique:

Army: Adepta Sororitas
HQ: Canoness Shilo (Canoness, grants 2 Faith points)
-Eviscerator (attacks last in HtH at S6 as a power weapon with 2d6 Pen)
-Inferno Pistol (6" S 8 AP 2 Pistol, 2d6 Pen within 3")
-Cloak of St. Aspira (2+ Armour Save)
-Book of St. Lucius (any unit within 6" uses her Leadership)

Troops: Ictus Canicula (15 Battle Sisters)
-12 Boltguns (24" S 4 AP 5 Rapid Fire, basic weapon)
-1 Storm Bolter (24" S 4 AP 5 Assault 2)
-1 Flamer (Template S 4 AP 5 Assault 1, No Cover)
-1 Veteran Superior (grants 1 Faith Point)
-with Eviscerator and Plasma Pistol (12" S 7 AP 2 Pistol, Gets Hot!)
-Litanies of Faith (1/battle activate Faith power without spending Faith or rolling for it)

Troops: Blazing Lilacs (10 Battle Sisters)
-7 Boltguns
-1 Flamer
-1 Heavy Flamer (Template S 5 AP 4 Assault 1, No Cover)
-1 Veteran Superior (1 Faith)
-with Mastercraft combi-weapon
(Bolter with 1 use Stake crossbow: 24" S 3 AP 5 Assault 2, Wounds Psykers on 2+)

Fast Attack: Insert Awesome Name Here (5 Dominion Sisters)
-4 Melta Guns (12" S 8 AP 2 Assault 1, 2d6 Pen within 6")
-1 Veteran Superior (1 Faith point)
-with Plasma Pistol and Burning Brazier (not Brassiere, close combat weapon, 1-use Flamer)
-loaded into a Repressor:
BS 4
Armour: F 11 (even with the dozer, what is this shit?) S 11 R 10
Carries 10, 7 can shoot out
Searchlight and Dozer added automatically
Storm Bolter and Heavy Flamer
-Extra Armour added (treat "Crew Stunned" as "Crew Shaken" instead)

---

So there we have it. Against swarm armies (orks, zergrush nids, infantry-guard. I may encounter the second, and will certainly encounter the first) it should be okay - decent armour, lots of attacks and template weapons should be pretty good.

Against tank-heavy foes, that's what the Dominions are for - they'll drive up, then melt holes in the tanks. Tank-guard are likely to be fought, and orks have some annoying high-armour vehicles too, so it's important I can make them explode.

I honestly don't know enough about Eldar or Necrons to say how that will go, and there's at least one Necron player that I'll be likely to face.

As for Tau, there are a few of them, and this is where I'm likely to lose - if it's a large battlefield then I'll have trouble reaching them before their superior firepower can take me out. On the other hand, if I can make use of cover and the like, and spam Faith for "lol 3+ invulnerable" then I may be able to close in and tear them apart.

Now the big one: Marine equivalents. Every man and his dog collects SPESS MEHRINS! Or Chaos Spess Mehrins. Against them, it's almost even - they're slightly better than Sisters before Faith, but slightly worse after Faith. But they can also get some really punishing weapons. Also, Terminators. Terminator squads will make me quite sad. Worse still, they can afford to chuck a Land Raider in - with 14 Armour on all sides, and most likely the Redeemer variant, which will hurt. But Meltas can turn that into an expensive (250 point before upgrades!) heap of molten slag.

All in all, I think it's about as good as I'm getting it. However I would like any advice anyone has to offer. Army lists CAN be altered between battles, too, but we won't know who we're fighting at any given time so there won't be any "Oh it's X so I'll make an anti-X army hurr hurr".
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Judging__Eagle
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Post by Judging__Eagle »

So, is small squads loaded with special/heavy weapons not so good anymore in 40k? I tended to do a lot of that myself.
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei »

Well they're sort of phasing that out - Spess Mehrins now have "You can take 1 Heavy Weapon if your squad size is 10, and you can take 1 Special Weapon for every X number of guys".

But at any rate, the squad size for Sisters is 10-20, not 5-10 like it is for Mehrins. Dominion, Celestian, Seraphim and Retributor squads are 5-10, however (assault weapon, elite, jetpack and heavy weapon respectively) and Repentias are 5-20.
Koumei
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Post by Koumei »

Perhaps if I put forward some of the other ideas I had:

*Make it 10 and 10 for the Sisters, and 10 Dominions (the extra 5 would just have Bolters, but Meltas can't actually be fired out of the Repressor so they could make use of the firing slits, and I could deduct casualties from the bolter bitches first). On the other hand, big squads firing heaps of bolter shells can be pretty scary - or even being so crazy as to elect not to shoot, and charging in big numbers into HtH.

---

*A completely different list:

HQ: Prioress Kasanja
(Counts as Spess Mehrin Hero Vulcan He'Stan: WS 6, BS 5, S 4, T 4, W 3, I 5, A 3, Ld 10, Sv 2+/3+ Invuln., armed with frag and krak grenades, bolt pistol, blessed weapon (+2 S, Power Weapon, re-roll failed to hit), twin-linked heavy flamer, digi-weapons (extra weak attack at a fast Initiative), and also makes all meltas, multi-meltas, flamers and heavy flamers count as twin-linked)

Troops: Ictus Canicula (10 Battle Sisters)
-7 Boltguns (24" S 4 AP 5 Rapid Fire, basic weapon)
-1 Storm Bolter (24" S 4 AP 5 Assault 2)
-1 Flamer (Template S 4 AP 5 Assault 1, No Cover)
-1 Veteran Superior (grants 1 Faith Point)
-with Eviscerator and Plasma Pistol (12" S 7 AP 2 Pistol, Gets Hot!)
-Litanies of Faith (1/battle activate Faith power without spending Faith or rolling for it)

Troops: Blazing Lilacs (11 Battle Sisters)
-8 Boltguns
-1 Flamer
-1 Heavy Flamer (Template S 5 AP 4 Assault 1, No Cover)
-1 Veteran Superior (1 Faith)
-with Mastercraft combi-weapon
(Bolter with 1 use Stake crossbow: 24" S 3 AP 5 Assault 2, Wounds Psykers on 2+)

Elite: Never Fading Lilacs (10 Celestians)
-8 Boltguns
-1 Storm Bolter
-1 Heavy Flamer
-1 Veteran Superior (with Cloak of St. Aspira (2+ save) and Sarissa (re-roll to Wound rolls when charging)
-1 Faith Point

This list has lots of troops but no vehicles. It's pretty shooty, but not at a high strength. All of the fiery weapons (5 of them) auto-hit get to re-roll failed rolls to Wound, and the Heroine is very hard to take down. Against tanks? Only the Eviscerator Sister Superior and, for Armour 10-11 ones, Kasanja, can actually penetrate. Swarm lists will fucking die though.

---

Very different: Inquisition steps in.

HQ: Inquisitor Lady Jena Tox
-with Psycannon Bolter (no Invulnerable saves, AP 4) and Inerno Pistol
-Rosarius (Inv. save)
-Word of the Emperor (Fear aura: Morale check needed to assault her)
-Divine Pronouncement (make a unit take a Morale check, with penalties, against running away)
+1 familiar (+1 to her I)
+3 Warrior Henchmen (+1 to her WS)
-1 with a shotgun and targeter, 1 with a plasma gun and targeter, 1 with a melta and targeter
+1 Sage (+1 to her BS)
+2 Chirugeons (ignore 1 Wound per round, even if it allows no save or causes Instant Death)
All in a Chimera tank with Multilaser and Heavy Flamer

Elite: 2 Death Cultist Assassins (with twin Power Swords)

Troops: Ictus Canicula (20 Battle Sisters)
-17 Boltguns (24" S 4 AP 5 Rapid Fire, basic weapon)
-1 Storm Bolter (24" S 4 AP 5 Assault 2)
-1 Flamer (Template S 4 AP 5 Assault 1, No Cover)
-1 Veteran Superior (grants 1 Faith Point)
-with Eviscerator and Plasma Pistol (12" S 7 AP 2 Pistol, Gets Hot!)
-Litanies of Faith (1/battle activate Faith power without spending Faith or rolling for it)

Troops: The Arm of the Law (8 Arbiters)
-Armed with Shotguns (12" S 3 AP - Assault 2)

(Totally being replaced with Hellguns once the new IG codex comes out. Mmm, delicious AP3 hellguns)

-Variant: lose the Familiar and Word of the Emperor, replace with 2 Penitents, allowing the retinue to nullify any Psykic power directed at them on a 2+

-Another variant: drop an assassin and an arbiter, take a Priest with a bolt pistol and CC weapon or whatever, and give someone melta bombs. Attach the priest to a squad and suddenly they reroll failed to hit rolls when they charge. The melta bombs can be used to blow tanks up, of course.

-One more variant: drop the Sisters down to 10 and take another Elite choice: 4 Repentias and a Mistress. They're expensive and not that great, but they haven't actually let me down yet. If they don't get shot to bits first (cover needed), they will destroy tanks easily. That alone is 8 attacks on the charge for S 6 power weapon hits with 2d6 Pen, and the Mistress will have 4 attacks on the charge for S 3 power weapon hits with a +2 Initiative bonus. Against other units, what happens is she goes first, maybe takes a few down, and then the enemies attack and probably kill all the Repentias. If they don't the Repentias then destroy them.

Lots of shooting in this list. Lots of shooting. Almost helpless against tanks, they get a tank of their own, however, and against weaker armour the multilaser isn't too bad (indeed, against A10/11 it's better than the autocannon and lascannon due to having 3 shots).

Note that the Inquisitor team is basically immune to either Psykers or Assaulting.

---

So that's a fair amount of other lists I can use. Thoughts?
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Post by cthulhu »

I think tanks are shit in this game and shit in tournaments. The best lists in tournaments in my experience (a couple of Cancons) are lists with a billion infantry dudes and some fast infantry dudes to deal with bullshit special objectives.

The other advantages with the no vehicles list is that it makes all their AT choices a total waste of time. Conversely I imagine taking a 100% tank list would make all their anti-infantry gear equally retarded, but that would be a dumb idea as tanks suck, and die super easily.

Summary: Tanks just get exploded in the face by the rampant AT everyone takes in case of tanks

Taking all infantry makes their AT useless and is a highly effective list.

Other random advice: Close combat squads that move very quickly (ideally can bullshit their way across 18" in a turn which has been possible with, amongst other things, eldar jetbikes) are extremely useful in a tournament enviroment.

Observation about tournaments: You get a lot of annoying scenarios that are annoying. Often peicemeal fed in reinforcements, so you need a variety of AT choices in your army. Having 1 is likely to get you smashed. This often makes a small number of large squads better.
Last edited by cthulhu on Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
Koumei
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Post by Koumei »

Thanks for that advice. I'm not sure on tanks being shit - I always get pissed off trying to bust them open in Apocalypse (even the non-Apoc ork thing with Front 14 and "I roll 2 dice, if either is a 6 I ignore the wrecked/destroyed result!"). But I suppose there is the fact that, because they're so hard to break normally, everyone takes tank-killers, which in turn means it only needs one good shot to destroy.

Now, if my foes go heavy on Terminators (I won't enjoy that), then I can either spam huge amounts of shots ("one of them has to get through!") or still use the AP 2 meltas.

Sadly, Dominion squads have to take a vehicle. Though that's 219 points eaten up right there, which could be instead spent on, say, 7 Seraphim with Melta Bombs, 1 of them a Veteran Superior w/ Power Weapon and 2 have paired Hand Flamers (and 6 points of spare change). As they have Jump Packs, they get the 12" move, and can also Hit and Run 3d6" out of combat. Aside from their shooting (shit range, but twin-linked), they all have the extra HtH attack from paired weapons.
cthulhu
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Post by cthulhu »

I play imperial guard. I took a tank heavy army one year, and then a 0 tank army the next year and my performance sky rocketed. It is that tanks are a very expensive asset and everyone has AT around.

But seriously, don't believe me - check the lists that win the tournaments.

Anyway, yeah, scope out some of the rules, some of the force composition depends on the scenario(s) you're likely to get and force blend.
Koumei
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Post by Koumei »

Well, this isn't so much a tourney as a campaign. Like... basically whenever you can, you organise a battle with another player, and more or less get a store supervisor to make sure it's all legit (although I'm sure no-one would pair up and go "Battle! I forfeit, you get 2 points I get 1." with each other so that they both walk out with several hundred points each on day one). The store people won't be forcing weird scenarios on us - aside from the Nemesis thing.
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