Monday, 12 November 2012

Chaos Marine Analysis - Land Raider

Bit of a bumper post for you today, and another one tomorrow. Today I'm going to be talking about something which I think is important in the Chaos Marine book, in the form of the Chaos Land Raider. But first, my preamble.

I played my second game in the Oxford Gaming Club 40k league, and like my first game, it was against Chaos Space Marines. 10 out of my last 11 singles games have been against CSM now, so I'm getting to know the book quite well. 2 stand out points for this game though. I got to seem a Daemons ally with them that wasn't Nurgle based, another Tzeentch army here. So there were Flamers, and there were Screamers. The second point of interest is that I had a major brain fart at the start of objective deployment (5 objectives, big guns never tire), and thinking that I was deploying next to where I was standing, I started loading my opponent's side of the board with objectives. Well done me.

Therefore, I had an uphill battle. I deployed aggressively, with my opponent going reserve heavy, and went to smash him off his objectives. The pivotal moment of the game however was the Daemon contingent failing, the flamers only managed to kill 2 Grey Hunters from my Warlord's squad so they, along with a herald of Tzeentch and the Screamers, tried to charge in. The Screamers failed their charge, allowing the Grey Hunters to knock the Flamers about before unleashing a wave of Bolter fire upon the Screamers, keeping the Warlord alive and securing an objective. The game finished with me tabling my opponent on turn 6. He was really cool about it despite the fact that his victory points difference (like goal difference) had now been ruined, as when I tabled him I was holding 4 objectives, and had all of the secondary objectives, as well as the points that I gained from killing his 3 squads of Obliterators. 18-1.

Now Land Raider, I'll quickly jump through the upgrades.

Dirge Casters, yes. As an assault vehicle it's going to want to be up in your opponent's business. Take them. Dozer Blade, sure. As some defence against terrain, why not? I'd take this too. You don't want 400pts immobilised in the middle of the field.

Warpflame Gargoyles. If you have 5pts to spare, go for it, but it won't make much difference. Combi-weapons. Leave these alone, we don't want to be piling more points than we need to in here just because it's already expensive.

Extra Armour. I think you'll be fine without it. Havoc Launcher. You could do, but remember that the primary objective is to transport a nasty close combat unit. Destroyer Blades. I would, but I'm bias. It gives your Land Raider something to do once it's cargo has been unleashed. Daemonic Possession. Not really worth its points in my opinion.

There, told you that would be quick.

Overall, I would say that the Chaos Codex is more close combat orientated than ranged orientated. Therefore, they need ways of getting into combat quickly and safely, which is difficult when there aren't really any assault vehicles. Therefore, if you have a unit that you really want to get into combat safely, like a hammer unit, then the Land Raider is the ideal solution. This is exactly like it is for a normal Marine Codex, simply because you aren't going to be using this for any random unit to get into combat.

When I've finished doing the individual unit analysis, I'm going to be writing some Chaos lists. One of them is going to be a tri-Land Raider list, just to see what it would look like and whether I think that it'd be any good.

I think that the only problem with the Chaos Land Raider is the transport capacity, which is the same as a Rhino. Remembering that Terminators are bulky, you can't really get a proper hammer unit into the Land Raider, especially when a lot of the Chaos units rely on larger squad sizes for their hitting power. I think that this might be a solution for units like chosen,, but I'll come onto which units would find the Land Raider useful when I get to them.

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