Losing Games

That old cliché,  that you learn more about your army by losing than winning applied to me yesterday.  Except at no point was I losing.  I was either drawing, ahead or drawing.  It just felt like I lost.

The reason I say this is because I had one unit left, approximately 10% of my points, against my opponent who had about 70% of his left.  After turn one, I had already lost 33% of my army, and so my strategy changed from trying to win, to trying not to lose through turns 2-4 while working towards winning through the back door in turn 5.  The sole reason I got a draw was because I was playing to win the set game we had, which was four objectives roughly in a diamond shape,

This was the first outing for my Daemons of Chaos army, using around 98% fully painted models.  My opponent used regular marines, but boosted by two Null zones and an army that was tailored for fighting daemons.  He had absolutely zero ranged anti tank fire and only one ranged weapon above strength 5.  Most armies would have had an easy ride, but mine was a fully foot daemon army with no real protection from Null Zone.

Now I could complain and say that taking Null zone against daemons is bad form and taking two is even worse.  However it is a valid option within his codex.  This made me think what could I do to counter such units should they reappear in a subsequent game.  I also wrote out the whole battle, in a battle report format, for the other members of my gaming group who were absent.  

Just taking the time to write down what happened and what I did, allowed me some insight into how my units performed in exceptionally difficult circumstances.  It showed that I needed to have some faster moving units in my list.  Units that I had either ignored completely, or not been convinced they would add any value to my list.  I had made a couple of massive mistakes, that had I won easily, I would be counting as brilliant tactical moves.  I had run the numbers in my head before making the concious decision to put all my toughness 5 and 6 models in my first wave, and all my toughness 3 and 4 models in the second.  The plan was to drop in, survive a round of shooting, then tie up the enemy until the second half of my army, consisting of mostly troops choices came in to grab the objectives.

As it turns out the one in three chance the wrong half turns up happened.  I was stuck with a bunch of easy to kill and expensive models, who virtually all got hosed down on turn one after they deep struck  For the entire game, I was playing with two thirds of the points of my opponent.   So what to do in the future?  Well there is a lot of different things, all of which seem to be a lot better now in hindsight.   I could have landed my troops at the back of my deployment zone, weathered a vastly reduced amount of fire, and waited for some of my other units to come down.  I could also have deep struck my units all onto one small section of the board, which was my original plan, until the large units came down on the first wave and I didn't want them scattering onto each other.

These two mistakes early cost me the game.  I can complain all day long about it being the two Null Zones in operation the entire game, and yes, they didn't help.  But neither did me losing most of my army before it could do a single thing.

Chaos Space marines are good for Beginners

I thought I would take this opportunity to look into why I still believe Chaos Space Marines are a good army.  Indeed, it is my opinion that they are possibly the best army in the game to learn how to play the system with, rather than regular Space Marines.  This may come as a shock to many readers, but I will hopefully be able to explain my reasons why I beleive this to be the case.

Point 1.
They are MEQs.  This means they have good armour, reasonable statistics and a reasonable gun.  Regular Chaos space marines have the ability to take two of the same special weapon in a ten man unit or one and a heavy weapon.  This allows them to imitate regular tactical squads, or field a more aggressive, shorter ranged unit. 

Point 2.
The book is very simple.  Most units have no or very few special rules of any kind.  While this is bland and boring, it is also incredibly easy for someone to pick up and learn.  After a few games, players tend to notice that Plague Marines, Berserkers and regular Chaos Space Marines are better than Thousand Sons and Noise Marines for example.

Point 3.
They have very few competitive units.  There are pretty much only three really good units in the book, and a handful of good ones in my experience.  The really good ones are Nurgle Daemon Princes, Plague Marines and Obliterators.  The good units are Berserkers, Chaos Space marines and Terminators.  Most of the rest of the units are either nothing special, over priced, or down right terrible.  Some of these are more than usable, in the right build, but require a bit more planning, so are not as newbie friendly as the units in the Really good/good categories.

You can therefore make a tournament competitive level list by taking two Daemon Princes of Nurgle with wings, three units of two/three Obliterators, and filling your points up on small units of plague marines with dual melta in Rhinos.  This is, all things considered a simple list to design and play with.  It only has three different units.  With the new FAQ, Warptime is no longer as mandatory as it used to be, but it is possibly still worth having on your Daemon Prince.  Otherwise just stick with wings.

Point 4.
Chaos follow the normal rules for leadership.  Unlike regular space marines, who have "And they shall know no know fear" which is very newbie friendly, the units in the chaos marine book, generally speaking, are either regular on leadership tests, or fearless.  Playing with these rules is useful as a stepping stone into the xenos codexes or guard.  If you learn with loyalist Space marines, it can be difficult to adapt to the other armies, due to the space marines inherent resilience to being run down in hand to hand and automatically rallying regardless of squad size.

Point 5.
Cheap in terms of money.  Unlike a lot of armies, this army can be very cheap to buy.  While individual units and models within this list are quite expensive, you get a lot of points and more importantly, you will use these models.  If you just buy the four model types I suggested, these will always find a place in your list.  This is not my usual experience with units in other codexes, where very expensive units, like Land Raiders, can sit gathering dust for months between games.

I hope this has given people some food for thought.  Any feedback is welcome.

Dreadnought Weapons Part 1

The Rifleman dreadnought is generally considered to be an optimal build for Space Marine dreadnaughts.  This article is going to explore if it really is better as an anti tank configuration than the older Twin lascannon/Missile launcher, aka Dark Angels Dreadnought configuration.  The general wisdom on the internet suggests that the Rifleman should be considerably better. 

TLAC = Twin linked Autocannon
TLLC = Twin linked Lascannon
ML = Missile launcher

Here goes.  Ill work to two decimal places for rounding purposes.  I don't see the point in being more accurate than that, as most dice are less than accurate!

All numbers are assuming a bs of 4.

TLAC                           Chance of Glance        Chance of Pen          Chance of kill
VS AV 10                              13.88%                    41.66%                13.88%
VS AV 11                              13.88%                    27.76%                  9.25%
VS AV 12                              13.88%                    13.88%                  4.44%
VS AV 13                              13.88%                           0%                      0%
VS AV 14                                      0%                          0%                      0%

Obviously, you need to take into account these numbers have four chances of coming up due to the TLAC dreadnought having four shots.  The numbers provided above are per shot.  Please note that this does not mean you add up all the percentages.  It doesn't work that way!

TLLC                           Chance of Glance        Chance of Pen          Chance of kill
VS AV 10                              13.88%                    69.44%                 23.15%
VS AV 11                              13.88%                    55.55%                 18.52%
VS AV 12                              13.88%                    41.67%                 13.88%
VS AV 13                              13.88%                    27.76%                  9.25%
VS AV 14                              13.88%                    13.88%                  4.44%

The TLLC has just one shot.   It has a very high chance of doing something vs low armour, and a chance of destroying anything in the game.  Finally for the ML, its partner in crime.

ML                              Chance of Glance        Chance of Pen          Chance of kill
VS AV 10                              11.11%                    44.44%                 14.81%
VS AV 11                              11.11%                    33.33%                 11.11%
VS AV 12                              11.11%                    22.22%                  7.41%
VS AV 13                              11.11%                    11.11%                  3.70%
VS AV 14                              11.11%                           0%                       0%

As per the lascannon, this only has one shot.  Due to not being twinlinked, the chance of rolling a hit in the first place is lower, which in turn reduces its chances of a glance. 

While the individual shots of the Dark Angels configuration may offer a lot higher chance of killing something, there is less of them.  This in turn leads to less glancing hits.  If you want your dreadnought to lock down an enemy tank by shaken/stunned results, then the Rifleman is both cheaper and more effective/reliable than the Dark Angels build.  If however, you want your dreadnought to actually kill enemy armour, then the Dark Angels design is better. 

This however presents its own issue.  The TLLC arm is less effective as an anti tank weapon than a multimelta. The multi melta is also cheaper, but has a shorter range, and considerably shorter range for its lethal melta rule to come into place.  This will be discussed further in a later article.

Tactical marines vs Grey Knight strike squads

This is the first in hopefully a series of comparisons between similar troop’s choices in different armies.  I hope to show that not all is as it seems between units which at first glance seem to be a poor option.

As space marines of various flavours are Games Workshops highest selling ranges, I think we can safely assume that they are probably the most popular.  Let us take a look at a common choice amongst players, the tactical space marine squad.  I hear quite a lot that all space marine armies should be based around three to four tactical marine units.  So I thought I would take a look and do a compare and contrast with grey knight strike squads

You can have five to ten space marines, who come with all the normal rules and basic equipment space marines generally do.  They have a sergeant and optional special and/or heavy weapons.  They can't take either of these options unless you have ten models, but then you get them free/discounted.  Therefore logic suggests you are paying at least part of these costs in the models you buy for the squad.

These compare badly to grey knight strike squads.  These come with a storm bolter and a power weapon for only a small amount of points more than tactical marines.   If they were paying the going rate for their weaponry they would be around ten points a model more than they are currently paying.  They can also upgrade their guns strength and field a supremely decent heavy weapon in the form of the pyscannon cheaply.

The next question you have to bear in mind is how important each unit is to the army it is included in.  Space marine tactical marines compete directly with scouts and bikes (if you have a biker captain) whereas strike squads compete against terminators and henchmen (with Coatez).  This is probably why the strike squads are cheap.  If they were more expensive, they would just be too uncompetitive against terminators in the same slot.  Tactical marines are unfortunately constrained by decades of being equipped the same, much like godhammer land raiders.  It is highly unlikely that tactical marines will ever change in their weapon choices, even in a new book.

Does this mean that tactical marines are miles worse than grey knights?  Not really.  They actually perform a slightly different role in the armies they are assigned to.  Space marines generally are a cheaper, therefore higher model count list than the grey knights.   Tactical marines can take the ever popular meltagun and multimelta combo, which is useful against mechanised armies which tend to dominate 5^th edition.

Having a power weapon, but only one attack limits how good at combat the strike squad is and stormbolters, while being good for basic troopers, are not exactly killing loads of the enemy as you are unlikely to have very many of them.  You can upgrade the guns with pysbolts but this is only economic in larger numbers of models which can be difficult to find the points for in a grey knight list.  The pyscannon is near mandatory, but can be fielded better on purgation squads which can field more of them, or on terminators which are relentless and can therefore use them more efficiently.