But when they come, they'll come in a flurry: serpent, jetbikes and rangers.
In the mean time, I have had some ideas.
n the ork board, there is a strategy called the BWagon rush. Not exactly the work of Sun Tzu, but effectively applies the principal of eliminating the usefulness of half the opponents army, with only the front of BWagons to aim at for the first few turns.
In the metagame, it seems that armour is ubiquitous. Hence every list is tailored to contain a large amount of anti-armour, in often very expensive options. I am wondering if we can make these expensive choices obsolete by making a list with no high T or AV targets.
The challenge with this is the extant need to include our own anti-armour elements. No vehicles / monstrous creatures (MC) means no mobile dragons, no EML, no BL. So our answer to armour comes in S6 shots, which we have plenty of, witchblades and star lance(s).
I am unsure whether such a list is necessarily mobile, as it may lack in firepower, or whether a fairly resilient 'anvil' would work. My personal philosophy with list writing is that all lists are 'all-comers', and I try to break the boredom of typical 'net-lists'.
So a list, applying the above might look a little like: (@ 1750)
Anvil
Farseer, doom, RoWarding
10 Avengers, exarch, defend, Pweapon & shimmer
10 guardians, Scatter laser
10 guardians, scatter laser
10 scorpions, exarch, claw, stalker
Hammer
Autarch, swooping hawk wings, fusion gun
6 Hawks inc exarch, talon, skyleap, intercept
5 Spears, star lance, skilled rider, withdraw
9 spiders, inc exarch, dual spinners
6 JBikes, 2 shuricannon
6 Jbikes, 2 shuricannon, warlock, spear, embolden
There are 5 scoring units, and heaps of opportunity to contest and claim objectives. It is quite a mobile force, but I am reliant on the spiders for ranged anti-horde and as my answer to MC's. The composition of the avengers I am uncertain about. Would bladestorm and dual cats be a better option?
I could also possibly drop 2 of the shining spears if I wanted them as a purely anti-tank role, but I figured that there is a severe shortage of power weapons in the list...
In my opinion, it can be done, since you effectively replace a mechanised wing of Wave Serpents with a mechanised wing of Jetbikes, as you have done, but the downside is that by taking such a list, you cannot take Wraithlords, and these are normally used to compensate for the loss of anti-tank which arises from the lack of Fire Dragons.
ReplyDeleteOne possible solution is to steal one of Gutstikk's ideas, that of fielding Storm Guardians with Fusion Guns, led by a Warlock with a Singing Spear, on foot as an anti-tank unit. You could also take a large scoring unit of Wraithguard, and use their Wraithcannons in this role, but they tend to end up in combat more often than not, so I feel that the Storm Guardians would be better. As for how exactly to use them successfully in this role, I'm not the best person to ask, as I cannot make Storm Guardians on foot work that well for me, but Gutstikk will be able to explain the tactic to you.
The hypothetical list looks good, but I would place the Autarch with the Warp Spiders (it's a more durable unit), and gear him and the squad up for close assault support, and give the Striking Scorpion Exarch Shadowstrike, so that this squad can outflank when appropriate. It also may be possible to include War Walkers for additional fire support, since their low AV means that any opponent who has loaded up on anti-tank weapons still won't have eligible targets, as lighter weaponry could still be used against these.
I believe Lazarus also recently won a tournament with no tanks in his list. So I'd say the concept has merit, for certain.
What you could do is go for the 3+ save units, or go for a hordish type of army - hitting both categories is probably not feasible, but leaning one way or the other could certainly work.
I like Storm Guardians on foot. A real inexpensive unit protects 2 meltaguns a long time, and a somewhat more expensive unit adds a third AT shot as well as some bodies. These guys can screen or follow your other units depending on how you build the list. Spiders or Scorpions are pretty good at leading a storm guardian formation, and large storm guardian teams are a great screen for large defender teams.