Warzone Octarius

[No One]

xtztxtxz said:

How many factions out there can ignore cover these days?

Many: how many can do so outright or even with stuff that's taken? Necrons is the main one I can think of: solar pulse just goes 'no' for shooting. Rets also, but that's basically just ignore dense usually for this, since invul vs meltas. Magaera does, which is actually a fairly big deal for that match up (though is only ranged attacks at least).

Astral aim and cents are the only others I can think of, but who takes those? The rest are just ignores light cover (e.g. HG, AdMech, Tau, Eldar, Fists). Though I wouldn't be surprised if TS have something somewhere I've forgotten about.

[purestrain]

I'd like to point out if it wasn't a thing yet known that the hive commander is full rerolls, so if you're using a Prime with the 6s to hit auto wound you can fish for more 6s against very hard targets

It also allows you to, if using it on Devilgaunts, to basically reroll two other dice every time you see a result of 6 the first time if you again are into hardened targets using the exploding 6s strat.

[tomb]

Oct 18, 2021 0:29:03 GMT xtztxtxz said:

Oct 17, 2021 13:15:22 GMT kazetanade said:

.

I agree both units can complement each other well in a 'threat overload' strategy. There will be different sets of targets for both units, as well as potential crossover in Hormas soaking overwatch or tagging units for 'stealers to kill. The only real contention is in which unit gets Relentless Flurry each turn.

Very curious to see if durable Genestealers can be a viable delivery option now:
Take them with Dynamic Camouflage & extended carapaces, plus a Broodlord with Synaptic upgrade
That's -1 to hit, then a 2+/5++/6+++ profile even in combat. In the early game the unit can also benefit from Catalyst / Maleceptor too, and even without those it's far more reliable protection from overwatch.

How many factions out there can ignore cover these days?

Of course another option could be just to run melee Primes / Broodlords alongside cheap hormas, giving them leadership / synapse / buff support plus heavy muscle where needed. BLs in particular will help them crack any trickier targets.

I can see this working. Primes to support max Hormaguants and Broodlord supporting max Stealer units. Brood lord can keep up with Stealers using their native advance and charge and Homs being slung out by SL trailing to an adrenal glanded prime. 
Some significsnr board control and character protection, whilst enduring that the 'synaptic web' extends across the board.
we are going to need to use some non character synapse to reduce our reliance on characters and succumbing to giving secondaries away. 
This is were the buffed warrior block will come in. Personally I'm imagining this as a support squad equipped for S5 shooting deathspitters and VCs and likely lashwhips.
I can see a place for a flyrant or do we know if Swarm lord gets the +3 engagement link?
What defensive buffs can max squads of Stealers and warriors 'share', Obs not at the same time for the most part, what goes where? 

[topaxygourouni]

I disagree. Stealers should be one time bullets like they are now. Nothing is durable in close combat. SoB sacresants come with 2+/4++ baseline and still don't dare to poke their head out of obscuring.

Here's the new shiny scarab occult terminators. Get 3 attacks each, str 5, -3 ap, 2 dmg. Come in units of 10 and are always buffed with +1 to hit. They also shoot 4 shots each with -2 or 5 shots with str 6 -3 ap with the cannons. They get +1 saves vs the stealers because we only do 1 dmg. how are you going to stack up against them in hth? they hit on 2+, wound on 3+ and then you are left with your 5++ alone to save you. Sacrificed all the mobility for that? People don't need to ignore cover to kill 1 wound models, even if they sport 2+ armor. Haven't even gone into discussing drukhari characters/ incubi/wyches or GK dreadknights.

Stealers are stealers. An 11 pt, super fast, point and delete unit that can trade up but should always be considered as dead after it does the deed.

Also, I'm more cold on stealers now. To make them better than kraken, we need to get a tyranid prime too, but then again, do they really need it? Exploding 6's is expensive for them and if we pay for that we better have 11+ models to make sure we benefit to the max, say 12 for redundancy. 12 stealers flung over to go punch something with double exploding 6's WILL punch said something pretty damn hard. Do we really need autowounding on top of that? Not sure. Autowounding link seems something that would make sense to give to smaller units, so that you can offset the smaller number with giving them more output. On the other hand flurry strongly urges us to play 11+ model units anyways. There is such a thing as overkill and overall I think flurry is enough for stealers/gaunts alone, especially if we also play devils and we want to do it twice every turn.

I don't think tyranid prime brings enough to the table to justify its synaptic link. If he had some serious punch then maybe. As is? Not sure.

Question: Can we play 2 units of warriors and synaptic link for +1 to hit 2 separate units on the same turn?

[No One]

topaxygourouni said:

Also, I'm more cold on stealers now. To make them better than kraken, we need to get a tyranid prime too, but then again, do they really need it? Exploding 6's is expensive for them and if we pay for that we better have 11+ models to make sure we benefit to the max, say 12 for redundancy. 12 stealers flung over to go punch something with double exploding 6's WILL punch said something pretty damn hard. Do we really need autowounding on top of that? Not sure. Autowounding link seems something that would make sense to give to smaller units, so that you can offset the smaller number with giving them more output. On the other hand flurry strongly urges us to play 11+ model units anyways. There is such a thing as overkill and overall I think flurry is enough for stealers/gaunts alone, especially if we also play devils and we want to do it twice every turn.

I'm not sure why you're saying that you need a prime for stealers: just exploding 6s alone is an insane damage buff for them, equal to Behemoth +1 to wound into T4 3+, albeit yes CP intensive. And with how auto wound interacts with rend (i.e. badly) it's not even that helpful. It's still decent if you're bringing a prime for e.g. cheap WLT HQ, and offers more for horms (who have pros/cons with stealers for this discussion). But not anything crazy.

Is this better than Kraken? Maybe (esp considering you can fall back and charge, albeit steep at 2 CP)? Similar strength when Levi brings more to the table for other stuff? Yes.

Here's the new shiny scarab occult terminators. Get 3 attacks each, str 5, -3 ap, 2 dmg. Come in units of 10 and are always buffed with +1 to hit. They also shoot 4 shots each with -2 or 5 shots with str 6 -3 ap with the cannons. They get +1 saves vs the stealers because we only do 1 dmg. how are you going to stack up against them in hth? they hit on 2+, wound on 3+ and then you are left with your 5++ alone to save you. Sacrificed all the mobility for that? People don't need to ignore cover to kill 1 wound models, even if they sport 2+ armor. Haven't even gone into discussing drukhari characters/ incubi/wyches or GK dreadknights.

16 man stealer with exploding 6s and full rrs kill ~4-5 termis (possibly more because I was lazy and didn't account for acid maw). With +1 to hit and full rr fishing you chunk most of the squad. Pretty solid for ~200 pts and 2 CP (plus support, but considering those are all very good general support tools...it's just opportunity cost).

Also 2+/5++/6+++ with -1 to hit is OK defensive profile, considering they're 15 ppm. That's basically termi statline for less than a third of the cost. Of course, just outright termi statline doesn't cut it (see: bog standard termis see no play), and we don't have something like apoth/heal/inner circle/AiD/disgusting for stealers. Warriors, on the other hand, are basically the same (trading 5++ for -1 D against shooting) and cost only (min) 2 ppm more for +2 wounds. They're just mediocre/bad at shooting/combat depending on kit.

Like, it's almost certainly workable: optimal? Eh...if you don't have anything better to do with adapts, it's pretty decent for 2 ppm and lose of reliable mobility? But how do you not have anything better to do with adapt, especially considering we actually have WLT worth taking and a lot of CP competition.

Question: Can we play 2 units of warriors and synaptic link for +1 to hit 2 separate units on the same turn?

Yep: it's max 3 per army and max one link on a single unit, but otherwise go for whatever.

[topaxygourouni]

16 man stealer with exploding 6s and full rrs kill ~4-5 termis (possibly more because I was lazy and didn't account for acid maw). With +1 to hit and full rr fishing you chunk most of the squad. Pretty solid for ~200 pts and 2 CP (plus support, but considering those are all very good general support tools...it's just opportunity cost).

Would like to see that math on that. SoT will always have -1 to be hit and 4++ on them.


16 stealers with +1 to hit, rr alls and exploding 6's:

4 with maws: 16 attacks, 3+ rerollable = 15 hits, say 3 6's so 21 hits --> 10.5 wounds --> save on 4+ --> 5ish unsaved wounds.
12 with claws: 48 attacks, 3+ rerollable = 44 hits + 7 6's so 58 hits --> 29 wounds (19 + 10 rends) --> 10 saves on 4++ --> 5 unsaved wounds + 19 on 2+ --> 3 wounds.

Overall 13 unsaved wounds, 4~5 termies dead.

So stealers will need the full rerolls buff AND the warriors' synaptic link to kill 4 terminators. This is not bad but definitely not enough to make sure that the stealers will survive to see another turn, which makes their "durable" build really questionable.

I did not even account for potential overwatch, which against a unit of 15 (and with SoT shooting eleventy hundrend shots) is possible that it will bring the unit under 11 models and then we don't get double exploding 6's, and we did not even address the elephant in the room, which is that with extended carapace we don't get advance + charge any more which means that it's not even certain we will get the charge early on.

I stand by my opinion that durable stealers is not a thing.

Yep: it's max 3 per army and max one link on a single unit, but otherwise go for whatever.

In this case I think 2 units of warriors will be baseline mandatory for the links. As for the third, I will still try Tervigon for starters, if it turns out not being enough I will probably shift to a third unit of warriors. +1 to hit is just so damn good.

[No One]

topaxygourouni said:

Would like to see that math on that. SoT will always have -1 to be hit and 4++ on them.

Uhh...no? There's...well, I'd say it's a 50/50. They can't have it T1, you've got shadows/denies/Levi strat (possibly Kronos as well). They're TSons, so expecting that they've get one up is basically guaranteed provided they've had a psychic phase, but both always? No. Also if they double stack, just killing something else is definitely a viable alternative (I think it'll very much depend on list/player, but I think most I've seen aren't running a single buffed 10 stack, and instead 5 mans and just buffing one/splitting buffs between them and other things. But I'm sure max buffed 10 stack is also common).

But yeah, was running into no buffs, which maybe not fair, but hey laziness .

I did not even account for potential overwatch, which against a unit of 15 (and with SoT shooting eleventy hundrend shots) is possible that it will bring the unit under 11 models and then we don't get double exploding 6's, and we did not even address the elephant in the room, which is that with extended carapace we don't get advance + charge any more which means that it's not even certain we will get the charge early on.

I didn't, but did glance at it and got ~1-2 dead with no cat: it was lazy, just 40 S4 shots and didn't go checking any buffs, but I don't think there's anything huge there. It's a thing, but not super problematic.

I stand by my opinion that durable stealers is not a thing.

Oh, this was more just a comment on stealers in general: if you tried to do this with durable stealers, you're more expensive and still just die, yes (though I think neither die to backswing, it's not hard to deal with a stealer unit that just shoved itself in your face). I think it's...OK. It's very good at protecting against chip, which stealers are otherwise very vulnerable to if they can't use terrain to 100% mitigate. But you trade reliable threat range for that, and chip protection really something that you need when you can just deliver from DZ with Swarmy? Seems fine if you want to do it, but yeah not optimal.

In this case I think 2 units of warriors will be baseline mandatory for the links. As for the third, I will still try Tervigon for starters, if it turns out not being enough I will probably shift to a third unit of warriors. +1 to hit is just so damn good.

I think 2+HQ, since WLTs want an HQ that's not really doing anything else (i.e. prime/BL/terv).

[topaxygourouni]

Malanthrope is good at doing nothing as an HQ, and it's 6" these days. But ye, I will probably go double warrior + Terv at first, because Tervi synaptic is stupidly utterly good.

Probably gonna go the full tanky build with -1 to wound too, go park its fat ass in the middle of the board and do warp ritual every turn or something like that.

For the genestealer story, yes it started as a "hey maybe durable stealers are a thing" discussion. I don't think they are, also partly because of the fact that without advance + charge it's not even likely we can get to the SoT T1 even if we do get to play first.

[kazetanade]

If you're going Terv, dont bother with double warriors - the two functions fight for the same role. Bring the Terv, bring a Broodlord, bring a load of gaunts; 20/10 or some such setup. Bring a Malanthrope for the gaunts and the Terv.

Make sure you have at least 1 unit of 30 Devilgants you can use, and personally would make sure there's at least 1 unit of 30 Boregants.

30 Gants are easy to kill - 120 or 150 is a different story. When you have 2 units on 2 objectives and they want to kick you off to score Hold 3+/Hold More... they end up underestimating the damage required, and then it becomes good times as units survive with like 8 guys left or something - hold the point - then get topped up for another 10 each. You'll eventually lose gant units, but its' a much longer process and buys a lot of time for the other bugs to do work. Like, a Tervigon supporting a bunch of gants, with 2x Barbed Heirodules and 1x HG pounding away at the back line, is a legitimately scary situation to have. Best part? SL not required, making suicide melee options less favourable and saves points. The only thing you *might* want to consider is a medium Warrior unit just to buff one of those Heirodules, and a Broodlord to buff the other one or your warrior unit. The Terv can just buff whatever needs the rerolls (the 2nd Heirodule, or maybe the HG).

On BS really quickly, you can do:

Terv, BL, Malanthrope

2x(20 Bore/10 Dev)gants, 1x30 Dev, 1x30 Bore, 1x5 Warriors with BS+LWBS, 1x3 Rippers

2x Lictors

2x Barbeds

and 15 points extra. You have 2 output based Links, and 1 Defensive Link for sharing. The only problem is the lack of a strong use of reroll all hits, unless you're OK with the 30 Devs starting on the floor (in which case, might wanna find a way to squish a 30 in reserve and 30 on board for 60 Devils total maybe). Can maybe drop 1 Barbed for some more MW synapse, or for that HG unit to take advantage of rerolls to hit. Gives a possible Dermic on Terv/ER on HG depending on need. Too bad the Terv doesnt restore anything other than Bore gants. Honestly, when they remake it, it should just replenish *any* Gant/Gaunt/Gargs, period.

[topaxygourouni]

I don't think broodlord link is necessary. -1 to hit we have already from the malanthrope and they rarely get to stack, and covers are all over the table available and they don't do much other than bringing the gants from 6+ to 5+ (yay).

I also don't think 30 gants with -1 to hit and 6+++ die that easily. You can always kill enough so that the unit gets out of LoS from the next firer, 30 wounds is a lot and -1 to hit can mess up with peoples' maths easily. And I don't want to play 120 termas, this gives me nightmares from ye olde 8th edition list of boredom.

I do want SL because I would like to have 3-4 small horma units I can buff with double obsec, yeet them up the board to sit on the enemy objective, give me stranglehold and strip their primary points next turn. Do this for 3 turns in a row and watch how they panic into stupid movements.

Double warrior link gives +1 to hit on multiple stuff, like devils AND something like a stealer blob or a barbed. Can even play them barebones naked with dual talons for 51 pt a unit (66 with the synaptic link).

[purestrain]

Question, a very hurt dima you give +1 hit to and change his hive fleet bonus to monsters at lowest bracket gain 2 attacks, would he function as if he was top bracket? Or near it? 8 attacks at ws 4 rerolling? I have two of them and one of them always gets bracketed hard or straight up blown away so I'm just curious.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Depending upon how bracketted, you'd still be not hitting as well. Note: I am not including the scything tail

Dima on each bracket without +1 to hit and without +2 attacks:
Top: 5.33 hits
Mid: 4.75 hits
Bottom: 3.33 hits

Dima on each bracket with +1 to hit, no +2 at bottom bracket:
Top: 5.83 hits
Mid: 5.33 hits
Bottom: 4.75 hits

Dima on each bracket no +1 to hit, +2 at bottom bracket:
Top: 5.33 hits
Mid: 4.75 hits
Bottom: 4.44 hits

Dima on each bracket +1 to hit, +2 at bottom:
Top: 5.83 hits
Mid: 5.33 hits
Bottom: 6.00 hits

[purestrain]

Maleceptor/Haruspex look like best friends forever now.

Give his maw murderous size, males 6s to wound increase ap by 1 (to -3 because of size) and reroll damage Link Then choose your target with full rerolls to hit and wound for 2cp and reroll damage at 170 points and t8 looks tasty, hes your main source of damage because why not? pay 2cp to make his hive fleet trait monsters get +1 hit in melee and watch the pain train go, as both sets of weapons will have reroll hits, wounds and damage.

[bestaltan]

Oct 18, 2021 17:40:16 GMT purestrain said:

Maleceptor/Haruspex look like best friends forever now.

Give his maw murderous size, males 6s to wound increase ap by 1 (to -3 because of size) and reroll damage Link Then choose your target with full rerolls to hit and wound for 2cp and reroll damage at 170 points and t8 looks tasty, hes your main source of damage because why not? pay 2cp to make his hive fleet trait monsters get +1 hit in melee and watch the pain train go, as both sets of weapons will have reroll hits, wounds and damage.

Somewhere on my haruspex I now need to subtly paint “pain” and on my maleceptor “train”. 🤣

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Oct 18, 2021 17:40:16 GMT purestrain said:

Maleceptor/Haruspex look like best friends forever now.

Give his maw murderous size, males 6s to wound increase ap by 1 (to -3 because of size) and reroll damage Link Then choose your target with full rerolls to hit and wound for 2cp and reroll damage at 170 points and t8 looks tasty, hes your main source of damage because why not? pay 2cp to make his hive fleet trait monsters get +1 hit in melee and watch the pain train go, as both sets of weapons will have reroll hits, wounds and damage.

You could not spend as much cp on the reroll wounds and bring a tervigon for reroll 1/2s to wound. It's practically a full reroll with that strength.