Yesterday I had the excitement of going to the gaming store to pick up my new Dark Eldar models in exchange for some old Grey Knight terminators. I'm now the proud owner of an Eldar Windrider host as well as the following reinforcements: two venoms, two boxes of warriors, two boxes of scourges and a Razorwing jetfighter.
However I decided not only to pick up new toys but also have a throw down game with the Grey Knight Draigowing army that caused me so much pain before.
This time things would be different. I wanted to try out a different army list using proxy models. It's something I've been kicking around for a while and works on the alpha strike principle. My opponent agreed and even loaned me the models to play it.
HQ - Belial and a vanilla librarian.
Troops - 10 terminators (2 TH/SS, Cyclone missile launcher, assault cannon, chainfist), 5 terminators (assault cannon), 5 sniper scouts
Heavy Support - 5 devastators (4 missile launchers), 5 devastators (4 lascannons), 5 devastators (4 plasma cannons)
The army is really simple. The heavy weapons gun down the enemy from turn 1 with support from the Librarian who casts prescience, the scouts and 5 terminators go for objectives and shoot what they can, Belial and the big squad drop in on turn one or two without scattering (thanks Belial) and lay waste to a squad with twin-linked shooting. If possible, you can split fire to take out a vehicle with rear armour shots.
This game, with my opponent's permission/encouragement, I switched up the army to replace the missile launchers with lascannons on the second squad. Let's bring the pain.
The game was pretty bloody and challenging and I lost the mission, but not in a bad way. In a nutshell:
- The Dreadknight shunted behind one lascannon squad and killed them off. They did a wound. He then ate my scouts squad before being shot down by massed firepower.
- The 4 psycannon paladin combat squad hid from the alpha strike then got into a close range gunfight and assault with Belial's squad who deep struck next to them. After the dust had settled, the paladins and Coteaz were dead, as were six terminators and belial (thanks Coteaz with your S8 Daemon hammer).
- Draigo and pals deepstruck in front of the las/plas and librarian building. They shot down a bunch of plasma guys but finally went down to lascannon blasts and assault from the small terminator squad. I KILLED DRAIGO...WOO HOO!
- The solo paladin dropped into the central building, grabbed the relic and hunkered down.
The game ended on turn 5 with five terminators and the surviving devastators ready to take out the last paladin. Unfortunately we ran out of time and my opponent won 5 to 1 (first blood, slay the warlord and three for the relic). One more turn and we could have tabled him for the win.
Annoying daemon hammer dude :-)
So how is the alpha strike army. I think it's a fairly solid concept at 1500 points and brings a lot of pain to the table. Belial's squad can really kill things (though Paladins are not easy) and will easily take out a whole unit of most enemy things, plus they are then in the backfield causing mayhem. In the meantime, the enemy gets to advance under a hailstorm of heavy weapon fire.
Now as far as models go, getting a bunch of heavy weapon dudes used to be a bit of a challenge with the various GW bits. I could go and pick up two boxes of devastators plus a tactical squad and use the parts that way, or I could go to Anvil Industry and get a squad of Exo-lord missile launcher dudes. With the other parts of his website clearly offering things to marine players, I can't see it taking too long for him to make some plasma and lascannon equivalent models.
Take care all and watch out for those new Tau rules....they look nasty :-)
Pete
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