Adapting your old list to Escalation, Imperial Knights, Formations and more.

[charliemachina]

Hi all

I feel currently the sky is not falling.

There are some horrible, horrible things that your opponent can legally put across the table from you these days.

Not long ago we didn't have:

- Formations
- Knights
- Flyers
- Superheavies
- Flying Monsterous Creatures
- Fortifications

in regular 40K, now we do.

More than ever before an opponent can bring a list that your list simply has no answer to.

I don't think you can simply take you old well thought out 5th edition list and expect it to stand up against these changes.

I think adaptions need to be made.

How can we deal with the above new threats:

- Bring Flyers of our own
- Bring your own Super Heavies
- Bring your own knights
- Bring your own flying monsterous creatures
- Bring your own fortifications
- Bring High AP shooting
- Bring a large volume of shots
- Bring Melta Bombs and haywire
- Bring Melta guns
- Use reserves and alternative deployment to avoid being wiped off the table and keep you opponent guessing.
- Play to the mission
- Use special rules (Battle Focus, Chapter Tactics to you advantage)

Any other ideas as to how to adapt to the changing game welcome.

I seems the game has changed and we all need to be looking to put some filth (also known as powerful combinations) in our old lists to make them viable.

Not everyone will bring a Revenant and if they do the guy that has gone against all advice and taken 3 squads of Raven Guard assault Marines will smash the Revenant into oblivion. These new lists can be beaten.

I think what we have at the moment is a situation where over specializing your list will means there will be lists you can't beat but I also believe you literally cannot build an all commers list with an answer to everything any more.

In short we have to decide on a list build, play our list and adapt our list and repeat. We will most likely never come up with the magic list to beat everyone.

The meta will keep changing, we have the tools and the choices avaliable to change with it without having to go and spend £85 on an imperial Knight if we don't want to.

I for one know I am going back to my old lists and looking not to rebuild them entirely but seek to adapt them to our current ever changing meta.

I have a 1500pts 6 Dreadnought, 9 Drop Pod, counts as Star Phantoms list.......6 Assault Cannons......it has no answer to may lists but it can tear others to peices......I really enjoy playing it.

What are all your thoughts......how do we cope with all this change.

[Houghten]

In my experience, there are very few problems which cannot be solved by turning the "dakka" dial up to "more."

[charliemachina]

Yep exactly......!

Every unit in your list now has to have multiple purposes......you guard squad is there to take an objective but it also needs those previously optional upgrades to give you all that you need against every threat that might appear.

A list with 3 Devastator Squads will need someone to move on to objective and can no longer rely on it's own fire power to win the game alone........mabye 12 las cannons las cannons is the answer......or maybe missile launchers with flak missiles......soo many hard choices all with there own consequences.....a list that will eat 5 Knights has little answer for 180 Ork boys!

It is now a different game...........it is about the list you can use!

[CrimsonTurkey]

I think missile launchers are about to become very popular.

Frag deals with gaunt, IG, etc fairly well, but the real strength is the ability to take krak missile, that can at least damage anything with a lucky shot, and flakk for anti-air in the same package.

High strength firepower from flyers is going to be useful in every game as well. It works as anti-air fire and, if there are no flying targets, works just as well against tanks and MCs, like MC Hammer.

[charliemachina]

Yes Missile Launchers are an excellent Swiss Army Knife option and allow you some ability to cover more gaps in your army. The can often get to flyers, hurt tanks, monsterous creatures and those lords of war.....only issue is the lack of AP 2 but still they cover a lot of gaps.

Similarly Melta Guns were not so popular when tanks numbers declined due to the appearence of hull points and the lack of a need to get that wrecked or explodes result. Now with Super Heavies and Knights we need a weapon that allows us to not only penetrate armor but also get that d3+1 hull points that makes the difference between damaging and killing the big threats we now see on the table.

Melta Bombs mean your infantry is suddenly a threat (however small) to many scary tanks, lords of war and monsterous creatures rather than something that gets killed by EVERYTHING.

What is useful in a list, has changed overnight......tactics need to change but more than ever every unit needs to be a threat to multiple targets.

Cheers

Charlie

[Souba]

i for one got a strategy to completely disable the close combat attacks of knights, in addition limiting their movement aswell as limiting the possible max range of that melta blast:

stronghold assault lets you take up to 6 tank traps per forification. tank traps are up to 6" long and each is a own model, they are counted as a single battlefield debris each and have to be placed within 6" of the actual forification wich is it bought for.

tank traps are impassable terrain for every vehicle except flyers and skimmers. even a superheavy cannot walk past it. as forifications can be placed up to middle of the board you actually limit the enemy player of moving his knights past that point.

a tank trap costs 15 points each and you can, as i said take it for every fortification. a aegis defence line for example can take up to 6 of those. line a aegis up in the middle, 32" long aegis barrier, now put those tank traps 6" infront of that barrier, thats a 36" impassable line for enemy vehicles (including said knights). now all they can do is shooting. such a defence costs only 140 points (90 for 6 tank traps and 50 for the aegis)

now we can improve this even further, with the fortification combinations like the imperial strongpoint. wich is 1-5 aegis defence lines, 1-3 bastions 0-1 skyshield landing pads and 0-1 honored imperium.

if you use said formation it is the best to put a aegis up the middle of the board with tank traps, 1 bastion one side of your deployment zone, with also additional tank traps to negate the chance of the enemy having outflank and move his superheavys from the sideline in your army. get another aegis defence line with tank traps in this formation and put it on the other side of your deployment zone with tank traps aswell to negate the enemy superheavy walkers.

fun thing is, as the actual base of a knight does not fit through most gaps of those tank trap walls, you can easly have 4"-5" space between them and even save some more points.

you got yourself a turtle base for 295- 355 points (dependent if you take 4 tanktraps for each part or 6) that also grants you a good firestation (the bastion wich will be hard to take down without the melta bonus) and good cover thanks to the aegis. you can add further weapon emplacements to it or just put points into anti armour long range weapons. congratulations. you invalidated the imperial knight codex he can only move in his deployment zone up to the middle of the board, thats it. for a cheap 295 points.

this combination also works for the wall of martyr formation wich adds you bonus anti tank in form of the quad icarus cannons and the like (you can put them on vengeance weapon batteries now)

[CrimsonTurkey]

That's a lot of points to spend just in case your opponent brings some knights.

[Souba]

if you consider that the defence protects you against all vehicles except skimmers and flyers, in addition to granting you great cover while costing less than a single knight. its okay.

consider ork battlewagons/landraiders. who have to sit at the middle of the board aswell and cannot bring the passengers to close combat. meaning they have to move halve of the table on their own.

[charliemachina]

Souba's idea is what i'm talking about.......you can actually build armies in so many different ways now that A Revenant Titan of a Transendent C'tan, or Knight Titans can be defeated......it's simply the lists that win now will be different in terms of their construction than the lists that won previously.

Souba's list could potentially throw out a lot of fire power from fortification based weapons and be very resilient it would be an unusual list that many lists would have no answer to.

Perhaps it's the time to build the list you think is cool and make it as competative as you can rather than building the list that you think will win........I believe as things stand every list has a counter and therefore no list is simply a winning list.

The objective is to create your list, that you like and learn to win with it.