Giving Yourself Over to the Dark Side

Hi,

Although I haven't got any gaming in recently, due to my nasty commute to work combined with my mates preoccupation with Magic, it has allowed me to embrace the Dark Eldar codex with a passion; each day on the train allows me to clock up hours of reading time, and time to develop battle plans.

An essential rule to becoming good at 40k is first to learn your own codex like the back of your hand. All the basic stats should become as second nature as reciting multiplication tables, but that's only the start of the story.

Next must come the impartial look at every unit, including delving into their wargear options, and wargear combos. You must ensure that you never right a unit off too early, and spend the time to think of all it's uses on the battlefield, plus the combinations with other wargear and/or units available.

The next stage is army list building, but rather than just build a list look at the balance accross the army, do I have enough:

• Anti-Heavy tank firepower
  
• Anti-Light Tank / Trasnport firepower
  
• Anti Heavy Infantry Firepower / Close Combat Ability
• Anti Light Infantry Firepower / Close Combat Ability
• Number and Resiliance of Scoring Units
• Ensuring that the qualities above are spread accross enough units

The last point is crucial, if a part of your firepower / close combat ability in a particular field is concentrated in too few units you open yourself to the risk that those units are prioritised by the enemy giving you a gap in your abilities.

A good example is a heaviy mech force taking out your ravagers early; can your list recover from this with its remaining anti tank ? Another good example is a MEQ or terminator army (mainly without storm shields) takes out your only incubi squad with your HQ character, do you have enough AP2 firepower that can be diverted away from anti-tank duty, enough liqifier guns for MEQs, and close combat weapons that ignore armour (power weapons, agoniser, talos or pain engine attacks etc.) to take up the slack.

Lastly you can consider how your army can do when faced against one of the top tier armies and different types of armies, examples include:

• Mech space wolves with supported by thunderwolves
  
• Missile spam space wolves
• Heavy Assault Terminator army
  
• Mech guard
• Guard blob army (big fearless units, still supported by a high number of various heavy weapons, and probably still a good number of vehicles)
  
• Decent of (Blood) Angels (60+ marines with 75% landing on your doorstep turn 2)
  
• Ork Horde with Kans & Buggies in support
  
• (4-5) Battlewagon Orks with Loota support & Kustom Forcefield in the middle battlewagon, plus Gaz giving them a close combat threat range of 28" from the front of any battlewagon.
• Twin/Triple Landraider army
• Nid Zilla (multiple tyranid monstrous creatures)
• Tyranid swarm
  

Run through battles in your mind, is it better to reserve the majoity of your army ? will a refused flank tactic work ? what strengths and weaknesses does your army have against theirs ? how do you best capitise on your strengths and their weaknesses while mitigating your weaknesses.

As well as looking at the armies suggested above, browsing forums and blogs for army lists gives you lots of material (which will probably be more balanced) to compare your army against. Always critic the listasking yourself questions such as; how would I play against that ? what's the threat the must be taken out early ? does it have a weakness that would allow you to deal with the army early, eg. crippling a few key transports allowing you deal with the army easier ?


Conclusion

All of these things can be done before your army is taken out of it's case for a real life battle, and while nothing can make up for battlefield practice, it doesn't mean you can't prepare yourself.

Go on, give yourself over to your army, live, breathe and think it. The ideal is that never again will you see an army accross the battlefield and stumble to create a battle plan.

Rathstar

PS. Aan example of my own gaming where this could have helped is two tournaments last year. My Tau were on the top tables in each tournament (table 1 and 2) in the last game of the day, and stumbled to form a good battleplan. Result was I was slaughtered, and dropped out of the top 3. Even though I had not faced those army types before I could have done better preparation.

An example of applying this method recently is I have been looking at the Dark Eldar list I created recently and worrying about it's close combat ability against heavy infantry. It was all isolated in one small incubi unit. Dropping one small warrior squad in a venom would allow me to:

• bring the rest of the troop choices up to full strength (to offset losing a scoring unit)
  
• add agonisers to two wych squads
• add 2 members to the incubi squad (so they weren't so frail)

Although it will still take battles against various armies to see if this change is best, at least I am aware of the weakness and can take account of it while playing (ie. be careful with the incubi against an MEQ army).

Lacklustre Dark Eldar 2nd Wave

Hi,

Well the Dark Eldar 2nd Wave is available for advance orders on the gw website (here).

Unfortunately the venom is not part of the second wave, and the entire wave are metal models. The second wave consists of:

• Succubus
• Beastmaster
• Kyhmera
• Clawed Fiend
• Razorwing Flock

The variety of models are pretty poor, with only one beastmaster and one clawed fiend model. There are also only 2 varients of the khymera and both look very simular.

Being metal the price of buying a decent beastmaster unit is very expensive. To build the unit I discussed in my previous article would cost:
5 Beastmasters = £43.50
10 Khymera = £87.00
6 Razorwing Flocks = £46.20
Total = £176.70 - OMG, You could do a LoganWing army for that

Compared to £62 to get 20 hellions, I can see very very few people using beastmaster units, and those that do will not use the official models. A much cheaper option would be:
5 Hellions (modelled as beastmasters, ie. without the glaive) = £15.50
10 plastic choas hounds (khymeras) = £15.50
2 Blisters of Fantasy Bat Swarms (3 bats per base for razorwings) = £17.60
Total = £48.60

Even the forgeworld flying rippers work out cheaper than the official razorwing models.

Overall I think it's a disappointing wave. The saving grace is that they are nice models and I can see myself tempted to pick up the clawed fiend, even though the succubus is a nice model, it's probably easier to convert one out of plastic as metal is harder to convert. After all who wants their succubus to have the same pose as everyone else's :)

Below are pics of the models, let me know what you think of the models, price for a unit or anything else about them.


Rathstar

Cutting to the Bone (Dark Eldar List)

Hi,

Well my gaming has still not been happening. I’m still not getting back from work anywhere near a time that would allow me to go to my local club, and to make matters worse my mates have had 2 magic nights in the last 7 days with no indication of 40k in sight.

What this does means that apart from assembling models I’ve been tweaking army lists to ensure I’m happy with the intended army list I’m building towards.

Recently under the hammer was my Dark Eldar list. After looking at Beastmaster units and really liking them, I went ahead and ordered some Forgeworld flying rippers to represent razorwing flocks.

I really like the beastmaster unit, so I wanted to see if I could squeeze them into a 1750 point army. I took as my base my current 1750 point army (in this post). I didn’t really want to lose any units, but came to the conclusion that I would probably have to lose one of the wych units to fit it in.

That's by the by, as I want to talk about a technique I always use when building lists. When you build a list you always run out of points before you put everything you want in. Worse case you have an army with lots of interesting units which have nice equipment, but overall don't work well together and is probably a small army.

My technique to avoid this is to cut all units to the bone. If I see a piece of wargear that is at all situational, or may only be useful in some/most games but unlikely the vast majority of games it also goes. Squad leaders and characters are also on the cut list. Going from leadership 9 to 8 will only change the outcome of a leadership test one in nine times on average, would it not be better just to have more models ? Will a character be better than another whole squad ?

Taking this method to my Dark Eldar. I first started by stripping the enchanced aethersails from all the vehciles. To start with I didn't want to go any further as a wanted to include 2 liquifier guns (one on the wracks, one on the haemonculus), and a 4th trueborn. However taking a second look because I wanted to put in a beastmaster unit several elements hits the chopping board:

• Succubus – although a nice cheap character, she only added 1 or 2 wounds per combat, so she went. The Haemonculus got the nod over the succubus because he's even cheaper and could give a wych unit Feel No Pain
• 4th Trueborn – a situational upgrade, and I expect many times the whole unit would just get destroyed
• Liquifier guns – again a nice upgrade with the potential for carnage, but sometimes it's dangerous to fire flamers when you're a combat unit because casulties removed may stop the charge, plus the random AP may tempt you into situations where you need a good AP roll.
• Hekatrix Agoniser – a nice weapon, but's it's very expensive. Running some number crunching against MEQs, the agoniser hekatrix did more casulties (as expected) compared to a venom blade armed hekatrix, but as the agoniser was so expensive the venom blade hekatrix did more casulties per point.

With these changes I was suddenly up to 132 points saved. Although I was no where near the cost of the beastmaster unit I wanted, I was very near the cost of a 2nd trueborn squad, and it would be nice to a bit of redundancy trying to get multiple blasters in range of enemy tanks.

Lastly reducing 2 units of wyches from 10 to 9 models, allowed me to include the trueborn squad transported in a venom and upgrade the existing trueborn squad's raider to a venom.

The revised list is bare bones, but it does have more firepower and a very respectable 71 models, including 12 vehicles. 22 Lance weapons (14 Dark, 8 Blasters), and 8 Splinter Cannons.

Although these points of the list look nice the list is crying out for a huge number of upgrades, such as:

• Agonisers
• Liquifier guns
• Wych weapons
• Flickerfields for the Ravagers
• A Combat Character

However once this list as been built it acts as a counter to any spending whims, because instead of saying “this upgrade would be nice” the question is also posed “what do I lose to fit it in ?” which helps to ensure any upgrades included are only efficient ones.

Finally at the end of the day, everyone includes some units which are not totally bought for their efficiency, but at least this method lets you know what you'll be giving up. For example I could lose a warrior squad and a trueborn squad to fit in my beastmaster unit, however I know I'll be losing 2 vehicles sporting 4 splinter cannons, and 8 models carrying 4 blasters between them. That's an awful lot of anti-tank and anti-infantry firepower, plus the loss of a scoring unit. Will I still do it; definitely, but probably not for all games :)

Rathstar

PS. For those that would like to see here is the final list

Bare Bones Dark Eldar List

Haemonculus - 55
Venom Blade

6 Incubi - 132
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2nd Splinter Cannon - 65

3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters - 81
in Venom with 2nd Splinter Cannon - 65

9 Wracks - 90
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

9 Wyches with Hekatrix with Venom Blade - 105
in Raider with Dark Lance - 60

5 Warriors with Blaster - 60
in Venom with 2nd Splinter Cannon - 65

5 Warriors with Blaster - 60
in Venom with 2nd Splinter Cannon - 65

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Ravager with 3 Dark Lances - 105

Totals: 1749 Pts, 71 Models (including 12 vehicles), 14 Dark Lances, 8 Splinter Cannons & 8 Blasters

The list seems nice overall, with 5 raiders of combat troops going forwards, flanked by trueborns and warriors carrying blasters in venoms to both help open up vehicles and soften up enemy units about to be engaged. All supported by 3 ravagers at the back. What I really like about the list is that everything is a threat; give the opponents lots of threats and he's more likely to get target priority wrong :)

[40k] January Review

Hi,

Well January has flown by, so let's take a recap of what's happened with my armies/hobby and other events that have happened.

40k Painting

Early in the month I wanted to increase the amount of painting I did on my armies, with the intention of going from one tournament ready* to three by the end of the year. What came out of these blog posts (link and link) was that I wanted to stay focused and try to catch some painting time in whenever possible (even if it was only half an hour at a time).

Coming out from this I put a army progress tracker in the sidebar:
As you can see there has been a bit of progress in January; the Space Wolves assembling is going well and I should have the army in a state where I can play games against my mates without borrowing their marine armies by the end of February. Unfortunately when I paint the infantry I paint the heads and backpacks seperately, so the army is will not be in a state to take down the local GW store or gaming club till it's completely finished.

The Dark Eldar are also making progress with the venom cut-up and put back together. The plasticard has been bought for the new crew area, and a simple design created on the computer to use as a template. The new raider keel blades have also arrived. I just not sure what to use for the splinter cannons (which go for quite a bit each on ebay). I have four of the old splinter cannons so I may use those (but they don't look nearly as nice as the new ones).

I've also been redesigning the blog a bit, and a new area is a My Armies page. At the moment it only contains my current army lists, but here's a sneak peak of some of my Dark Eldar pics that I will be putting in there soon (including one of my converted Talos you've probably read me lament that it won't be in my new army list):



Goal for February will be to get the Dark Eldar Venoms fully assembled, paint the new Ravager (it's was converted to match the rest of my army this month), and finish assembling the Space Wolves up to 1500 pts.

Other Hobby News

Later in the month my Tau were not forgotten, and I considered removing both railheads to increase the firepower in the list, in this post. I have another broadside unit, but it needs painting, so some Tau might make it onto the painting table.

Other Hobby news is that a tournament that I want to attend (A Small Matter of Honour, hosted by the Sad Muppets Society club in Basingstoke), will be allowing people to reserve and buy tickets soon. My Tau have gone 2 years in a row (and came 3rd last year), should they be given another chance, or should they move a side for my Dark Eldar ?

Grey Knights looks like they are coming soon, Warseer is good if your want to see all the current rumours. Personally all three of my armies like the idea of expensive marines to kill, but we'll have to see what nasty new toys they bring to the fight.

GW has released some updated FAQs, highlight being DE have a FAQ now, and Dark Angels and Black Templars being updated with the new marine codex equipment (they can now use the new storm shield rules). The DE FAQ was not mind blowing but is nice to have an official ruling on some ambigious rules (blog post here). While they were at it, GW also released the Stormraven and BA Dreadnaught for preorder.

Gaming News

Unfortunately gaming was a complete fail for me this month. My new job is a nightmare commute, so if I leave at early at 5pm, I'll barely make the local gaming club for the 7pm start, and so far I've been able to leave anywhere near 5pm on the club gaming night. To make matters worse my mates have got into Magic, so there's been half a dozen magic nights over the month, but only one 40k night, for which I got to late (work again) to see the end of a Dark Eldar vs Guard battle before the rest of the night was taken over by Magic.

I'll try and get some games in during February especially as I need the practice, either my new Tau list, or my Dark Eldar which I definitely need more practice with.


So what's happened with you over January, and what are looking forward to in February ?

Rathstar


* in this case tournament ready means painted and ready to be allowed in a tournament, not how competitive it is.

[Tau] De-Mech or Die, Part II

Hi,

Welcome to part 2, I'd like to start by addressing some very good points bought up in the comments section to Part I

Completely De-Meching

To reiterate the main aim of the post was to explore increasing the anti-tank firepower, a solution I suggested was to reduce the mechanised elements in the Tau army to give the points required for more anti-tank.

It was quite rightly pointed out that removing all the mechanised elements of the Tau army would mean all the enemy's anti-tank guns would be directly towards broadsides and crisis suits, and probably instant killing them in short order. Tau tanks are one of the most survivable in the game, due to their good armour, long range on their guns allowing them to stay further away from their target, and the humble disruption pod which allows them to take their 4+ cover save with them.

Other reasons why I think Tau tanks are still required as follows:

• They are great at contesting objectives, once they are moving >6” and there aren't any meltaguns nearby they are really hard to get rid of.

• Our fragile troops can not march across the battlefield and hope to get to distant objectives, let alone survive on close at hand objectives. A Devilfish means that any objective can be threatened, and will take serious firepower over to remove (first the devilfish and then the occupants have to be destroyed.

I also stated in the comments that I did not think a fully mech army can compete too well in 5th edition. These two posts are me exploring where in between the two (fully mech and non-mech) is most effective.

The Change

Moving on to my current list I want to change:

Shas'el with 2 Drones
2 Fireknifes
3 Fireknifes with 2 Drones
3 Missile/Burst Suits with 2 Drones
6 Fire Warriors
10 Kroot & 7 Hounds
10 Kroot & 7 Hounds
10 Kroot
8 Pathfinders
Devilfish
Railhead
Railhead
3 Broadsides with Advanced Stabilisation Systems, Leader with Target Lock, Blacksun Filter & 2 Shield Drones

Everything normally did their job quite well, apart from the railheads. They didn't put out much firepower for their 165 points each price tag, but as mentioned above they were very useful for contesting and absorbing firepower.

I also noticed that in some games I did not always need to move the broadside unit that much. So my idea was to switch a railhead for a unit of static broadsides. So I tried to build the cheapest 3 broadside unit that was still effective; here is my result:
Broadsides Team – 245 pts
Broadside with Drone Controller with 1 Gun Drone & 1 Shield Drone
2 x Broadsides with a Target Lock

To ensure the railguns had the option to split fire the basic suits had targets locks (the only cheaper options to fill the har point is the blacksun filter or a drone controller). Also note that I did not include a leader because I used the basic hardpoint for the drone controller.

Lastly I downgraded one of the drones to a gun drone. Being behind my army or in terrain I nearly always got a cover save, so against a lascannon the gun drone would be the same as a shield drone. Of course I'm bound to now face space wolf missile spam where an extra 2+ armour save drone would be useful.

This new unit costs 80 pts over the railhead. Now I am losing a lot with the railhead, I'm losing a str 6 large template option, the durability to distract a lot of enemy firepower, and the excellent late game contesting ability, but I have upped the number of railguns hits (not shots) by over one and a half a turn, plus the new unit can not be shaken or stunned.

Now I had the hard choice of where the 80 pts required for the upgrade would come from. I was tempted to use lose the unit of 10 kroot, but I've found having only 3 troop choices is running a bit small especially as I would be making them more fragile; the pathfinder devilfish to transport a unit would come under more firepower with the reduction to only one other vehicle to distract the enemy.

So instead I picked the hounds from the second unit of kroot. It's always essential to have a large kroot unit to cover a lot of ground for the rest of the army to hide behind, but sometimes the second unit didn't need to be so large, especially if they were going to be sacrificed and I normally had a good idea by then the direction the enemy would break through the 1st line of kroot.

With 3 pts I could save from taking the blacksun filter off the broadside team leader (filling up spare points before) I had now saved 45 pts. The rest of the points would will come from what I think would be a controversial spot.

As I said before my railheads didn't seem to put out much firepower over a game. Part of the reason for this was that they were shaken or stunned on some turns. This will only happen more if I halved the number of railheads I had. However I was not going to drop the hammerhead, as I believe it is too essential to contest objectives and draw firepower, so instead I will morph it into an ionhead. Yes sometimes known as the bastard stepchild of the hammerhead chassis weapons, but it is significantly cheaper at only 130 pts for the whole tank (incl multi-tracker and d.pod). If it spends a few turns shaken/stunned will an extra 35 pts for a better weapon be that useful. The ion cannon still has it's uses, against monstrous creatures it is better than the railgun, marines don't like walking in the open with it around, plus against tank armour 11 it's performance is on par with the railgun, so it can add to the crisis suit's missile pods light vehicle killing and suppression firepower.

The anti-tank firepower has increased from 3½ to 4½ railgun hits a turn, and 9.8 to 11.8 str 7 hits a turn. At the expensive of 1 less vehicle chassis, and losing both mobile railguns. I will have to use the dual firebase tactic more to account for the loss of the mobile railguns; with spread far away from each other firebases if an enemy advances to one firebase it will expose it's flank to the other. However I think the change should help my army kill vehicles better and faster.

The New List

Here's the new list in full:

Shas'el - 102
Missile Pod, Cyclic Ion Blaster, Multi-tracker, 2 Gun Drones

Crisis Team 1 - 124
2 Fireknifes

Crisis Team 2 - 211
3 Fireknifes
incl Leader with 2 Gun Drones

Crisis Team 3 - 163
1 x Crisis Suit with Twin Missile Pods, 2 Gun Drones
2 x Crisis suits with Missile Pod, Burst Cannon, Multi-tracker

6 Fire Warriors - 60

10 Kroot with 7 Hounds - 112

10 Kroot - 70

10 Kroot - 70

8 Pathfinders - 96
in Devilfish with Disruption Pod - 85

Hammerhead - 130
Ion Cannon, Burst Cannons, Multi-tracker, Disruption Pod

Broadside Team 1 - 280
1 x Leader with Advanced Stabilisation Systems, Target Lock, 2 Shield Drones
2 x Broadsides with Advanced Stabilisation Systems

Broadside Team 2 – 245
1 x Broadside with 1 Gun Drone & 1 Shield Drone
2 x Broadsides with Target Locks

Total: 1750 Pts

What do you think of the new list ? It has some static elements, but still has a mobile element of 9 crisis suits and the 2 vehicles. Will it do better than the previous list, or have I de-meched too much ? What's your balance between mech and static, anti-tank and mobility ?

Rathstar

[Tau] De-Mech or Die, Part I

Hi,

Following on from the previous Tau post about the decline in Tau players at tournaments, my thoughts turn to how I can improve my Tau. After the poor performance at the last tournament (44th of out 52), partially due to bad match-ups and mistakes on my part, I would to look at a way to improve my list.

Looking back at my games, particularly the ones I lost, problems seem to fall into one of two camps.

One is army match-up. The Tau really struggle against fast melee armies. Heavy cav and beast daemon armies spring to mind, and although I haven't faced them yet I expect Blood Angels using assault troops with decent of angels would be a big pain. These armies tend get to the Tau lines very quickly and overwhelm the kroot layers before the enemy is weakened enough, plus they normally have the speed to catch the retreating crisis suits. Although adding more kroot screens and piranha blockers could help it would still be an uphill fight,.plus the more points invested in screens and blockers the less firepower you have to kill the enemy, so adding more screens may only delay the inevitable rather than change the outcome of the game.

The other group of problem games involved not de-meching the opponent fast enough. How good are the hammerhead submunition templates, burst cannons, plasma rifles etc. if you can't get the enemy troops out of their transport, your anti-infantry firepower is wasted or proving ineffective (such as firing at transports that they have little chance of affecting). Also vehicles can produce pretty large no go areas whether it's the threat of assault from the occupants or just the threat of deadly firepower. Both issues can stop the Tau from advancing and using it's firepower as best as possible (which normally includes getting plasma rifles in rapid fire range of infantry).

As armies seem to be getting more and more mechanized it can really mean that if you can't kill vehicles you die, hence "De-Mech or Die".

I'm finding that if you have too much anti tank you will de mech the enemy early, but will be a bit ineffective at killing the infantry, however because they have been de meched fast you will definitely be in with a chance of winning. On the other hand I'm finding that if I don't have enough anti tank that the enemy is able to advance on my lines too easily which normally means I am pinned back from advancing. These battles tend to be much harder, and my lines are likely to be breached with my expensive firepower units not having the room to get away.

From my experiences I believe it is best to go a bit heavier on the anti tank, and then worry about the rest (anti infantry, scoring, blocking). Say you think you need 3 railguns considering your local meta I'd advise taking 4. If you de mech the enemy fast you can still use hammerhead submunitions and broadside SMS against the enemy. If however you have bit of bad dice and/or one of your railguns dies early you could be in for a very tough game.

More anti tank you say, buy which type ? Tau have two main anti tank weapons. The railguns and the missile pod. If you want to kill a tank then only a railgun will do. The missile pod will get damage roles but is much better at suppression fire, ie. hoping to at least stopping the vehicle firing. For example if you have a full rhino advancing on you with extra armour, no damage result apart immobolised or dead will do, but getting a side shot on a vindicator, a "can not shoot" will allow you to move onto other threats that turn. It's good to have a good mix of anti tank but for targets which have to die to stop then really ruining your game it has to railguns, so make sure you bring enough. It take too many missile pods to destroy a rhino (on average), much better you bought a couple of extra railguns so you can fire the missile pod AND the crisis suits secondary weapon at the rhino's occupants.

I think the best way to get enough anti tank firepower into a list is to de mech the Tau army. Now this tactic has more risks for a Tau army because any enemy anti tank can be redirected towards our crisis suits and broadsides which will probably be instant killed. However swapping a hammerhead for a unit of broadside will significantly increase the railguns hits. Also minimizing devilfish will allow more crisis suits to be taken.

You will take a bit in mobility but the extra firepower should allow you to de mech and therefore slow and disrupt the enemy better and sooner.

Part Two will show how I've made a small tweak to my current army list by applying this new thinking.

What's your thought on the importance of anti tank to anti infantry firepower ? Is partially de meching the Tau army too risky (and doing the enemies job for them) ? What's do you think the required railgun count is for the points level you play at ?

Rathstar

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Dark Eldar Razorwing Flocks

Hi,

I was looking through the DE codex, when I got one of those OMG moments.

I had read discussions where Razorwing Flocks were mentioned; 5 rending attacks, 5 wounds. All well and good, but seems just ok, because I someone was under the impression that they were around twice the cost of a (space wolves) grey hunter, so you can imagine my surprise when I was looking at the hellion entry and glanced down the page and saw that the Razorwing Flocks were the cost of only one grey hunter.

My only excuse was that previously I had been concentrating on getting my Dark Eldar tournament ready asap, and therefore I wasn't looking at any units that I didn't have unless I thought it was essential to the army. Therefore I only decided to buy a 3rd ravager and convert 2 venoms.


So Why Are the Razorwings So Good

Well as stated they have 5 rending attacks (6 on the charge) and 5 wounds. Unexpected for something that has so many wounds and attacks for so little points they are still T3.

They can be combined in a unit with the basic Kyymerae (the replacement for the last codex's warp beast) which have a nice 4+ save, which gives them someone to catch any str6+ shots which would instant kill them.

They can come out of a webway portal giving a threat range of a circle with a diameter of 48" around the portal (they have the potential to asssault anything within 24" of the portal the turn they arrive).

Another thing I've noticed with beast units is that theie threat range can be underestimated by opponents, as they start out only moving 6" plus D6" run move, and then suddenly later in the game they dash 19-24" into a key combat to tip the balance.


The Bad

They are beasts so can't go up buildings, a common tactic againt nob bikers is to stay in the top level of ruin, however a beast squad will only be a small part of the army so they'll be many other units that can take a unit or two hiding in a ruin.

They have low toughness and very poor armour saves, so if you don't kill most of the enemy with your high initiative attacks you will take lots of wounds back, however this is a trend accross the majority of the DE range.

If they don't charge they move no faster than a running grot, and will get left behind by the rest of the fast moving (either jump infantry, jetbikes or transported in fast vehicles) DE army. This means that they are slower over the long run than hellions. Hellions (on average fleet rolls) can charge a unit 37" away in 2 turns, for Beasts a turn 2 charge is 6" slower at (on average) 31" away (but this is still 5" away from the opponents table edge if they are set-up 12" onto the table).

To take Razorwings you have to take beast masters which seem very lack lustre for their points. They are wyches that are 2 pts more expensive. The get the beasts rule, but lose a close combat attack, plasma grenades, 4+ dodge and combat drugs. All they are good for is being being the first few models to dive in front of the enemy and die (the last beast master is needed to keep their leadership, but the rest can die).


Best Uses

Combine the Razorwing Flocks in with Kyymerae to reduce their weakness to instant death.

Set them up agressively with a view to getting to the enemy asap. They are slower than your transported assault troops, and you want the beasts to be in the 1st or 2nd wave, definietely not the third. DE need to hit an area at the same time to overwelm it quickly and move onto the next. If they arrive piecemeal it turns into a game of attrition and the DE can not win that kind of fight due to their low toughness and nearly non-existent armour save.

The combined unit of Razorwing Flocks and Kyymerae does not need cover too much as the Kyymerae has a 4+ inv save, plus after turn 1 the unit will probably get a cover save from the faster raiders in front of it. If possible advance near terrain in case you do want to pop in, but don't be afaid to advance round it so it doesn't slow you down.


An Example Unit and a Comparison to Hellions

An example unit is:

5 Beastmasters - 60
10 Kyymerae -120
6 Razorwing Flocks - 90
21 models totalling 270 pts with 45 wounds

You could give one of the beastmasters a special close combat weapon, and you could drop either 5 Kyymerae or 2 Razorwing Flocks to get a Clawed Fiend, but the above configeration is a good base unit to get you started. It has 10 models with a 4+ inv to protect the Flocks from instant death and soak up characters attacks, while having lots of attacks.

A quick comparison against the same cost in hellions (17 hellions = 272 pts) looks good against marines in combat, assuming the ideal (and therefore extremely unlikely) scenario that both the beasts and hellions charge the marines before they take any casulties.

Beast Unit puts out: 10 Str 3 beastmaster attacks, 40 Str 4 Kyymerae attacks & 36 st 3 rending Razorwing Flocks

Hellions puts out: 51 str 4 attacks

and the number crunching gives us the following average marine casulties: 7.8 from the beast unit vs 4.2 casulties casued by the hellions. However if the hellions get a good combat drug result, such as reroll to wound, their casulties against marines would go up, to 6.3 in the case of reroll to wound.

So in raw combat power against marines the beasts seem up have the upper hand. Against lighter troops the advantage of the beast unit would increase because they have more attacks and some are at lower str.

So the other differences are:
1) Hellions get Power from Pain (PfP) for the whole unit, while only the beastmasters have it.
2) The Hellions are faster if both units are out of charge range
3) The Hellions have more firepower while only the beastmasters in the beast unit can shoot
4) Without cover the beast unit has a better save, as they have 10 models with a 4+ inv save
5) Hellions get Hit & Run

The extra differences make it a much more closer contest between the beastmaster unit and the hellions. The hellions would also get the nod if you include the baron (making hellions troops), however in that list I can forsee taking both hellions and beast units a valid option.

One of the two last things that makes it beasts for me, is that they are slower to start off. The Hellions will be right in front of the army with your first wave, because they can move 12" and then fleet an extra D6", so if your raiders & venoms only moved 12" to fire their weapons the hellions might be the closest thing to the enemy and a very obvious threat. The beasts on the other hand will be a few inches further back from the front of any raiders that have moved 12", this gives the enemy a hard choice; kill the closest vehicles or shoot the beast unt whichis fast has lots of attacks, that is probably benefiting from a cover save, so that any hit that if less than str5 only as a 50:50 chance of taking one wound off a five wound model which costed 15 pts.

The last point that makes me choose beasts is that they won't be many people picking Razorwing Flocks, because of the big issue (see below), which means it will give my list something different.


The Big Issue

What models to use is the main issue. Most people agree that they should be on a 40mm base, and be like a flying swarm. So the models most people are suggesting are:

Warhammer Fantasy Bat Swarms


Lord of the Rings Bat Swarm


Reaper Bat Swarms


Reaper Murder of Crows


Forgeworld Tyranid Winged Rippers

For the 6 bases I wound need (for the unit I decribed above) the Fantasy Bat Swarms would cost be £17.40 for 2 blisters (if I spread the bats lightly at 3 per base), however I really don't like the odd models.

The Lord of the Rings Bat Swarms looks much better than the Fantasy models, however they look a bit large for a swam, and finally they would cost a fortune (£49.20 for 6).

The Reaper minis, although being really nice models, seem a bit big for what the model should be. Also they have the disadvantage that I wouldn't be able to use them at any official GW events, but as I don't think I'll be going to a official GT this year (the non-GW run events are cheaper and better most of the times) it shouldn't make that much difference this year, but that could all change next year.

The Forgeworld models cost exactly double the GW ones at £34.80 for 18 models (3 a base), plus Forgeworld's expensive 12% delivery charge (another £4.18 in this case). They look much nicer than the GW models, are bigger (and therefore 3 on a base doesn't seem like I'm skimping), and are the only models that look like alien creatures.


Conclusion

I like the unit. They come off better in combat than hellions, but lack some of the hellion abilities (eg. combat drugs, PfP etc.). By being in the same unit as Kyymerae the weakness to instant death is mitigated. The Beast unit is also a nice mixed unit that aids it's durability. Finally the beast unit is a unit that is different to most other DE units, so it's nice to have something different from the rest of the army to add to the overall flexibility.


Next Steps for My Army

After my first read of the new codex I wrote off beast units initially because they would take alot of work to be added into my army. The old beastmaster model I had didn't have a skyboard so joined the wyches, and the warp beasts I had were the old dodgy looking ones and I only had four of them.

Giving them another look I'm realy looking forward to putting a unit together. I already have some hounds that can be the Kyymera. I've now ordered the winged rippers from forgeworld, and I'll be getting some Hellions to be beastmasters. The beast unit will be the first (non-vehicle) unit I'll be painting up for my DE in about 5 years.

I'm going to limit the DE painting only this extra unit as I want to focus on getting the Space Wolves up and running. So the painting line is now Ravager & 2 Venoms to get the DE tournament ready, then Space Wolves painting with some Beastmaster & Razorwings interjected to give me a change from time to time.


Have you seen the beastmaster units with Razorwing Flocks in action, and if so, what did you think of them ? How do you rate them compared to hellions ? What models have you seen people using for Razorwing Flocks ?

Rathstar