I've finally finished my Drop Pod, it
may not be the nicest looking thing in the world and if I had put
more effort into it, maybe give it a couple more washes or by a bit
more careful with the weathering it could look nicer. But it's a good
enough tabletop standard for me at the minute, I've still got a pack
of Long Fangs to finish this week remember. So here's the picture of
the Drop Pod:
In other news, 'curses to ye GW!'. I'd
better get this Dark Angels analysis finished pretty quickly, due to
the teaser for the new Daemons being out, and that's something that
I'm going to want to look at, with me being a Daemon player and with
them being my Wolves worst match up currently. I also played a game
at the Oxford Gaming Club tonight, against a blob Guard army, the
Relic. I started to run out of steam towards the end but although I
was getting battered in the last 2 turns I would have won had I not
failed my 2+ save on my Warlord, as it was it was a Draw.
I did an interview with my opponent for
the 40kUk podcast afterwards (as you do) so make sure to check out
the next episode with the segment 'War Stories' in it.
But anyway, if I'm going to get this
done before the Daemons drop I'll need to go quickly, so on with the
generic vehicles!
Dreadnought:
The Dreadnought really is pretty
homogeneous to other marine codecies here. It still isn't worth
taking it in a close combat capacity, nothing has changed in that
respect. Krak grenades causing a problem as well as overwatch, plus
the dread doesn't have that many attacks in the first place. On Krak
grenades, when people were first saying about this and how this
changed a lot about how dreadnoughts, etc, worked in close combat. I
snorted a little under the banner of 'only 1 attack and 6s to
glance'. But actually, I've been using them a lot more recently, and
they're actually pretty useful. Many a comedy moment has been
generated via Krak grenades. If you're looking for one such example
take a look at game 2 in my Invasion Tournament Report.
But back to dreads, if they aren't
worthwhile in a close combat role how would you want to use them. It
straight up comes with a Multi-Melta, so you can always put it in a
Drop Pod and drop it in your opponent's line, hoping to take out a
vehicle. A little suicidal but you could take something out with it.
The problem that I had with this is that there are too many variables
in play. First you need a vehicle to shoot at, then you need a space
within 12” to land, then you need to hope that you don't scatter
outside of that, then you need to hit, then you need to penetrate,
and then you need to roll a 4+ to explode the thing. See.
It also works well as quite a good
distraction. The problem here being that if you've already destroyed
your target, the Dreadnought may not be too high up on your
opponent's target priority. Maybe you'll get a few meltaguns coming
your way from tactical squads, etc, or maybe a couple of plasma
shots, but you still aren't going to cause too much disruption. You
can try and tie up units but then a clever opponent may move less
valuable units around to bubblewrap their more precious ones.
You could to a similar thing with a
Heavy Flamer, but then it is severely range restricted, it may cause
more of a distraction in today's infantry based UK metagame but
you're still giving away first blood without doing much damage in
most cases.
Alternatively, you could replace the
Storm Bolter on the Power Fist for a Heavy Flamer for an additional
10% of your base points cost, that way if you do destroy that
Manticore or whatever is back there, you can still be a threat.
Getting a little spendy though, pushing the 150pt mark for an
unreliable distraction.
For an additional 20% of your points
cost you can make your Dreadnought a Rifleman, with 2 twin-linked
assault cannons. Some will say that Riflemen can be used as
anti-flyer now, but realistically although you may be getting 4
twin-linked shots you're not going to hit flyers too often, plus
you're only S7, you can get an Aegis with a Quad Gun for less points.
When vehicles start to come back into the meta (and they will), maybe
Riflemen will come back out again, as although they're not too bad
for dealing with infantry, their forte is popping lighter vehicles
like Rhinos.
What is quite interesting is that, if I
recall correctly, the venerable upgrade is cheaper on the Dreadnought
for Dark Angels than in other marine codecies, maybe GW are trying to
bring it back. It comes in at 25% of your base cost it does what
venerable has always done, but it also makes your Dreadnought a
deathwing vehicle. Giving it preferred enemy, Chaos Space Marines. A
nice little boost. I still wouldn't take venerable however, its main
function is to increase your durability (you're not paying that many
points for preferred enemy), and with vehicle killing so much less
dependant on the vehicle damage table now, it isn't really doing
enough. If you could make your opponent re-roll successful glancing
and penetrating rolls, now that would be something.
Vindicator:
Demolisher Cannon armed vehicles are
always quite funny in my eyes whenever I see them across the table. I
deploy 30” away from it (bar a Lone Wolf), it then drives forward
trying to get into range, failing on the first turn, and then spends
the remainder of the game reversing as a Lone Wolf attempts to charge
it down.
I'm not really sure what to make of the
Vindicator. I don't particularly rate blasts if I'm honest. If your
opponent has spread out you're probably only going to get a maximum
of 5 models. And although you're likely to kill the vast majority
that you hit, it's still only 4 models.
Where I think that the Vindicator
excels is taking out units deep striking in your face. For example,
Terminator squads. When they deep strike down they're all bunched up,
sure your opponent can run apart, but you could get a low run, plus,
that Vindicator is still scary, cancelling out your 2+ save.
It's not ridiculously expensive either,
coming in at the same price as a Maulerfiend. It comes with Storm
Bolter, Smoke and Searchlight as standard. The Storm Bolter is
useful, suffering a weapon destroyed result only has a 50% chance of
making it essentially useless. As are the smoke launchers, often
you're going to be out of range at the start of the game and an
armour 13 vehicle with a 5+ cover save is hard to shift.
You then have the option of taking the
siege shield. In my view it depends on whether you have the points
spare. If you have a lot of terrain where you're going, and are
looking to move the Vindicator up rather than using it as a threat
daring your opponent to come any closer, go for it, if you're looking
to use it for the latter, probably not, as you might not be moving
around too often. However, it's only 10pts, and it makes the model
look a lot cooler. Just remember to magnetise it on.
Other than that there's not a lot to
say about the Vindicator. It's a decent buy, pretty cheap for the
armour and the power of the weapon, shame about the range. I suppose
that if you do want to push them forward it is best to take multiples
of them, they're difficult to deal with on front armour and having 2
will make it harder for your opponent to hide from them, or deal with
them with Lone Wolf like units/models.
Predator:
The Predator is quite low priced,
coming in at just 10pts more than a Whirlwind, that's not bad for a
13 front armour vehicle. The only problem is how much damage it puts
out.
It only comes with an autocannon as
standard, so only 2 S7 AP4 shots at BS4 per turn, I could do better
than that with the Dreadnought. The only option that you have for
replacing this is bumping its cost into triple figures for a twin
linked Lascannon, so 1 shot at S9 AP2 that is much more likely to
hit. I'm personally not a fan of a single Autocannon, it doesn't deal
with vehicles well and it doesn't deal with infantry well. At least,
a single Lascannon shot is ok against vehicles, although it is only 1
shot, it beats paying an extra 80pts for the same thing on a
Nephilim.
If you are going to swap out for the
Lascannon, I'd say that the only option that you would consider
taking if you really want sponsons is the Lascannon varient, as the
Heavy Bolters are not going to help you in an anti-vehicle capacity.
However, it does make it just as expensive as a 6 man Long Fang pack
with 5 Missile Launchers, so pretty spendy for 3 shots.
Alternatively, if you keep it with the
Autocannon, I'd go for the Heavy Bolter sponsons, as you're
definitely not getting your points worth from 1 autocannon. Now
you're getting 8 shots which will wound marines on 3s and 2s. That's
not...horrible. It does come in at under 100pts though, and wouldn't
be too bad for camping objectives in Big Guns, it also comes with a
Searchlight, which is useful in this situation, and smoke launchers,
not so useful as you'll be in a position to fire, but it's nice to
have them if you need to stay alive. It's not like you were going to
cause too much damage anyway right?
Anyway, vehicle upgrades. There really
aren't too many, and thank goodness for that, this post is already
long enough. The first option is the Dozer Blade. I suppose if you're
moving around a lot. I think that this is probably a better option
for the Vindicator than the Siege Shield, it's a little cheaper and
the odds of you rolling immobilised on a piece of difficult terrain
twice during the course of the game is very low. One re-roll should
do the trick. As for the Predator, it probably doesn't need it, it
won't be moving around a whole lot.
The extra Storm Bolter. Again, pretty
cheap. Not a bad option on the Predator as it's safeguarding some of
your valuable weapons, but you have 3 of them, so losing one isn't as
bad as if you were say, reliant on 1 big gun to be effective. Exactly
like the Vindicator, so not a bad option on that, another safeguard
against losing your Demolisher cannon, for a measly 5pts. Plus you're
getting 4 Bolter shots at up to 24” range now, which is a nice
little bonus for mopping up those 1s to wound with your cannon.
Extra armour. The same cost as the
previous 2 upgrades combined, and I think that it is so unlikely that
it'll get used that it's not really worth it. If you have suffered a
stunned result you only have a maximum of 2 Hull points left anyway,
and that's already a turn wasted where you cannot shoot, plus it's
likely that you will be wrecked via Hull point subtraction before it
matters. It's not going to get used too often on your vehicles to
make it worthwhile.
The Hunter-Killer missile costs the
same number of points as extra armour. It's kind of like a combi
weapon for vehicles really, and therefore I probably wouldn't take
it. It's useful if it works, but I find that paying points for
something that probably won't do anything in a game to be wasted
points personally. A bit like the Tachyon Arrow, although this is
much cheaper (and also much less effective if it hits) so it's not so
bad.
Anyway, that's it for this post. It is
currently 10 past midnight 2 days after I started writing this post.
Hqs up next.
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