IG dance party of doom! (1,500pts)

[RocketRollRebel]

So sorry for the title, just figured it would get some more attention :p. I posted a 1,500pt tourny list last week which I felt good about but I worked with the points some more and I feel like this one may be more brutal and to be honest I've been having a lot of fun with aggressive mech lists (I played enough gunline IG in the past and it gets BORING!).

Anyway this list is by no means meant to be soft since I'm planing to take it out to a GT in the spring and I'm looking for revenge on those damn Canadians!:p

So with out further a due...

Vostroyan 77th Firstborn Regiment

HQ
----------------
Company Command Squad
Plasma x3
Chimera w/multi-laser & heavy flamer
-150pts

Troops
---------------
10 Veterans
Melta x2
Flamer
Chimera w/multi-laser & heavy flamer
-150pts

10 Veterans
Melta x2
Flamer
Chimera w/multi-laser & heavy flamer
-150pts

10 Veterans
Melta x2
Flamer
Chimera w/multi-laser & heavy flamer
-150pts

10 Veterans
Melta x3
-100pts

10 Veterans
Melta x3
-100pts

Fast Attack
-------------------
Valkyrie w/Multiple Rocket Pods and Multi Laser
-130pts

Vendetta w/3 Twin Linked Las Cannons
-130pts

Heavy Support
-------------------
Hydra x2
-150pts

Basilisk
-125pts

Manticore
-165pts

-1,500pts

So what are your thoughts? I feel like this will offer me a nice wall of armor, mobility, and a nice load of fire power. I'm open to anything really but the things that I am questioning are, should I make room for the Officer of the Fleet (he is in almost all of my lists), Should I just go with two vendettas? and should I go for a medusa over the basilisk?

Looking forward to your input!
Thanks!

[Jwolf]

Officer of the Fleet discourages enemy Reserves; you love enemy Reserves, so don't take him.

I think Valkyries are more useful to you in this list.

Medusa is better than Basilisk in almost every case.

[Chumbalaya]

Pretty much what jwolf said.

[karandras]

I personally prefer Vendettas to Valkyries. However, with all of the melta you already have, the Valkyries would probably better balance your list. Definitely agree with the other points already suggested by Jwolf in regards to the Baslisk. Also, I would probably try and add a medipack to your command HQ to protect against gets hot. The order making them twin linked works well too, but cannot be used against a squad.

[Lord Azaghul]

Actually I love it.
This is my kind of list, it looks fun and versitle.
Seriously I would actualy play this list.

[MVBrandt]

2 x Vendettas, b/c against heavy mech marine lists you want to be able to throw as much crap at transports early to break up movements against you. You're not gunlining, but you also don't want to go "toe to toe" without combat support, which you don't have.

I'd drop the flamers on the vet squads ... single basic flamer templates won't help you all that much, and a third meltagun has a dramatic impact on statistical reliability.

Medusa over basilisk, unless you think you'll be going to the one tournament where they actually use enough terrain and you can somehow find los blockage to protect the bassie ... otherwise not worth it.

There's a lot of reason also to take demolitions on one of your vet squads. If you wind up going first on occasion, the ability to first turn alpha-strike multi-charge a wall of transports if your opponent presents them with a squad of 10 meltabombs is ... hard to resist.


IMO IG work best at high mobility transport and vet spam with the right mix of heavy support. I shake my head at the "leafblower" notion and how poorly it works in our game group vs. how well it worked in bizzare competitions like ardboyz. Props for staying away from that poo.

[Lord Azaghul]

2 x Vendettas, b/c against heavy mech marine lists you want to be able to throw as much crap at transports early to break up movements against you. You're not gunlining, but you also don't want to go "toe to toe" without combat support, which you don't have.

I'd drop the flamers on the vet squads ... single basic flamer templates won't help you all that much, and a third meltagun has a dramatic impact on statistical reliability.

Medusa over basilisk, unless you think you'll be going to the one tournament where they actually use enough terrain and you can somehow find los blockage to protect the bassie ... otherwise not worth it.

There's a lot of reason also to take demolitions on one of your vet squads. If you wind up going first on occasion, the ability to first turn alpha-strike multi-charge a wall of transports if your opponent presents them with a squad of 10 meltabombs is ... hard to resist.


IMO IG work best at high mobility transport and vet spam with the right mix of heavy support. I shake my head at the "leafblower" notion and how poorly it works in our game group vs. how well it worked in bizzare competitions like ardboyz. Props for staying away from that poo.

I have a lot to disagree with in the above post:
2 Vendettas - No, he still has a good deal of armour kill, vendettas can't handle troops, taking one of each allows his army to remain flexable.

Flamers in vet squads: Again this is a flexability issue. Vets get out, pop armour, now what? Flamer is a great cheap option for turning light armour troops out of cover or simply using a volumn of wounds - the more wound you make the more saves you opponent has to make.

Medusa V Basilisk: I don't think this is or has been a fair comparision. Higher S does not equal better. I think both machines have there place, neither is bad or wrong. The bassie is still a very good option, and its indirect fire ability adds to its flexabilty.

Demosquads: 30 points in a guard army is often better spent else where. Keeping things cheap keeps them disposible, Taking one off options like the doctrines really adds up and narrows down your flexability - after all if you melta guns didn't kill the tank do you really want to risk the s8 single d6 v armour scattering back on you?

Vet spam: One of the best things about the current IG book is that there are so many viable options. Vet spam/leaf blower is legit, but imho is not the best. I belive a mixture of platoons and Vets is the best set up. Yes it can be a risk in KP games, but the disadvantage is traded off in any objective based game.

[MVBrandt]

Tomato.



I think flexibility on units is a questionable call. The vets for the most part are maneuvering about with a heavy flamer transport, which will in most situations provide you with what you need in that regard. If you're going up against MEQ, terms, etc., the meltagun is roughly equivalent in value, esp. smaller squad targets. I wonder why people ever think that triple S9AP2 weapons or S8AP1 weapons at BS4 aren't good at killing infantry ... they're just not great at killing mass infantry like orks and other guard, but the list has plenty to deal with those already.

I don't really disagree with anything you've posted, we're splitting hairs at the higher end of the power curve here. If your opponent has a bunch of infantry to target, the guard really don't want to have to get up in their face and don't need to. At the least these are going to be ork squads with pklaws, at the worst they're going to be guard squads with meltaguns, and your flamer isn't a guaranteed squad clear.

Theorycrafting bagged for a bit, I play and advocate dedicated purpose units ... I think splitting a unit's functions to versatility flies in the face of a very long global history of wargaming that inherently shows weakness at specific roles when you expend purpose and slots on flexibility. Redundancy and purpose over flexibility and variety.

As for the Medusa v. Basilisk, indirect fire is a rare thing in this game, and has few uses besides the obvious effects on side armor, or troops behind vs. in cover. S10 AP2 is going to be more frequently more effective than S9 AP3 (or is it 2, I confess I don't use bassies often anymore, but IIRC they're AP3).

I think that vets are as much or more of a risk in KP games than platoons, b/c they are almost always going to have a transport thrown into the mix with them for a 2 kp situation, and they aren't blobbable, but I don't think KP are as much of a worry as lesser players make it out to be, so w/e. I don't listbuild to KP, or suggest to it.

As far as platoons go, I'm not a fan of stationary armies at all, and the purpose of the OP is clearly not a stationary army, so platoons really aren't where he wants to go, and I don't think they're the best way to go regardless ... stay mobile, stay active, maintain the initiative in the game. It's clearly the point of the list.

To that effect I wonder if there's a place for the "gunline" points investments of the manticore, hydras, bassie. Those points could in theory be spent on more airborne or transported power. Just a thought.

In short, if we're going to get all pugilistic here on a point by point ...

Flamer + 2 melta = bad, keep your units to one purpose and make sure you've got redundancy at the various purposes

Medusa vs. Basilisk = Medusa is fully capable of killing anything the bassie wants to kill, and LOS blockage (esp. with tourney style terrain) is a rarity; plus let's remember range mins and such

Demosquads = pick your poison; I think it's worth a small 30 point investment to have a vet squad that can blow up NUMEROUS enemy transports on turn 1. I'm guessing you just haven't seen that happen before. Because of the 2" to the "back" of base rule, the placement of the vendetta/valkyrie door spots, the scout move, etc,. you actually have a good chance even against a well deployed opponent of getting charges off on transports (like rhinos and other chims, or tanks, or w/e) on turn 1 with a demo squad. It can be game breaking. Even if you don't get it, that squad is available as a useful countercharge if your opponent's armor manages to luck out and get to you in-tact, or if you get stuck with a few dreadnaughts on your hands, etc.

Vet Spam - Touched on above.

Vendetta vs. Valkyrie - I like the valkyrie with multiple rocket pods a lot; I like the vendetta a lot; in my head I envision dropping some of the stationary artillery in a more mobile army, so I envision replacing its anti-tank/transport capacity with another vendetta. OH, and with the new Tyranids coming out, Vendettas are going to be PRICELESS, with the ability to one-shot zoanthropes, warriors, raveners, biovores, etc., and with far more utility against monster/mid-creature lists than the rocket pod valk. For this kind of list, beating the nids is going to be emphatically about killing those mid and bigs while staying buttoned up away from the littles.

[Lord Azaghul]

Tomato.

Vendetta vs. Valkyrie - I like the valkyrie with multiple rocket pods a lot; I like the vendetta a lot; in my head I envision dropping some of the stationary artillery in a more mobile army, so I envision replacing its anti-tank/transport capacity with another vendetta. OH, and with the new Tyranids coming out, Vendettas are going to be PRICELESS, with the ability to one-shot zoanthropes, warriors, raveners, biovores, etc., and with far more utility against monster/mid-creature lists than the rocket pod valk. For this kind of list, beating the nids is going to be emphatically about killing those mid and bigs while staying buttoned up away from the littles.

Tomato indeed sir!

This one actually made my laugh, not in the mockery sort, but my thoughts were the exact opposite. The new Tyrands are going to make Valkyries priceless! I again, was looking at the volumn of wounds potential vs the Vendetta!

Platoons: I think I should explain my general platoon set up (you can check my blog here for a full listing of my standard 1750)
PCS: Plasma, melta, flamer
3x10 Flamer sarge w/melta bomb
1 HWS: Lascannons
1 HWS: autocannons
1 HWS: Mortars

I also take 2 CCS, one stayings back with a MoO giving orders, the other Advanaces with my Platoon giving Orders.

The only things that remain 'static' are pretty much my HW teams. I will admit that I do NOT own any of the new guard toys yet (getting valk to christmas), hence the lascannon squad AND the LC's die most every game, BUT they still manage to threaten my opponents, and people seem to dedicate ALOT of fire power to kill them, which along with being threatend by advancing infantry men, and my heavy fire support means ALMOST everything in my army can threaten ALMOST anything in your army while YOUR stuff (not you specifically of course) can only target or is seriously dimished if it doesn't target specific things.

But Tomato indeed, it really comes down to what works for you and what play style is effective. I agree that in the list above platoons would not be an asset, but I also think that the design of the list is very fuction and flexible, and my preference is flexable!

Good discussion.

[MVBrandt]

Vunderbar reply. Your initial "I disagree with a lot" line had me wondering about the tone, but the follow up cleared up the quality quickly :) ... good discussion indeed.

[RocketRollRebel]

Wow I don't think I've every had an army list post elicit this kind of response haha. Anyway The main reason for a lot of indirect fire weapons essentially a little PTSD from the last GT where with a similar list (1,850 mech vet but with russ's) I was rolled round 4 by a 200ish Ork horde that had cover saves all the time and it knocked me out of 2nd place so I'm looking into more weapons to deal with that. There also were some serious tactical errors made on my part that I think attributed to the loss but eh live and learn.

As for the vets I really have never been a fan of multi tasking but I figure that the vets in the chimeras dont get much AT action as it is so they can maybe afford to mix it up a little.

Thank you all very much for the great input. I plan to try a bunch of different configurations and just see what we end up with.

thanks!