Wednesday 7 November 2012

Chaos Marine Analysis - Forgefiend

It's Wednesday Night / Thursday Morning. It's 1:30am, we all know what that means. Time to write a semi-coherent blog post. These late nights seem to have effected me a little. At 3:00am on Tuesday I woke up and accidentally read my clock as 9:20. Thinking that I was late to my lecture I got ready as quickly as I could, threw on some clothes and chucked/put my Ipad, pens, etc into my bag, before legging it out of the door. It took a while for my to clock that it was dark.

Therefore, in this less than optimum state, I have decided that I am going to be analysing an easier unit today. I had considered doing either the Havocs or the Land Raider, but I think that both of these units are going to require some heavy analysing, for reasons which I shall go into when I get to them. Therefore, today's post is on the Forgefiend.

Weighing in at 20pts less than a Defiler, at the same cost as a Doomsday Ark, it's quite a chunk of points. Especially considering how long it's going to be on the board for. Yes it does have 'it will not die' and a 5++ save but it's also the size of a Tervigon so hiding it is going to be tricky, and when you get down to its armour values it's ok but not fantastic, essentially armour 12 with 3 hull points.

The question of its durability becomes even more of a problem when you start to think about how big a target is going to be pasted on top of this thing. Yes, it's only BS3, but honestly, my Ork player is coming out here and saying that enough Dakka can often offset crappy BS, and it's these guns that make the Forgefiend such a big target.

The first choice that it gets is a modified Autocannon, known as the Hades. It has a shorter range, but +1S, double the shots and pinning. Ouch. So you;re churning out 8 S8 pinning shots per turn. The range is annoying, in a static shooting unit I like to be able to sit back and throw shots into the distance but 36" is ok. Although you can always just move.

The second option is a pair of Ectoplasm cannons. Again, modified Plasma Cannons. -12" and +1S. If you're looking to kill Paladins, this could be the trick with this Codex. You can then take a third one for an additional 1/7 of the Forgefiend's cost, but remember that they get, so you could hurt yourself.

I think that even with the BS3 both of these weapons are brutal, and although the Forgefiend has decent armour, with so much painful weaponary it's going to attract attention. I like the Forgefiend, I don't think that it's terrible at all. But unfortunately, I think that it's going to be one of those units that is most effective when you take multiples of it, to give some target differenciation.

1 Forgefiend isn't a problem as I can just shoot it down, it might take a few hits but what else does my anti-tank have to fire at. However, 2 Forgefiend's is going to be a difficult nut to crack and although you might end up losing one the other is going to get full usage, and the other is still going to get some. But then, is this really worth that many points?

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