Post-Templecon Musings

Hey guys,

I spent this past weekend at Templecon in Warwick, RI. I had a great time, the scheduling was perfect, and I don't feel burnt out on the hobby like I did after Adepticon and the NOVA Open. I had every intention of doing detail battle reports for my games, but I got some news right after the first game that kept me from doing that.

My Space Marines did very well, considering I didn't really have any practice with them. My record was 3 wins and 2 losses. I was surprised at the armies I beat, and puzzled by one of my losses. Here's the breakdown of my opponents:

Round 1: Mechanized Blood Angels - He was running a list that was based around the same idea as mine - shooting. Except that he had Feel No Pain and Mephiston, so I fully expected to have a rough go of it, as he had advantages on me. Fortunately, my librarian came up huge, and put Mephiston in a place where I could kill him early. At the end, my opponent had 5 assault marines left, as well as an immobilized and weapon destroyed razorback. Resounding win for me.

Round 2: Necrons - Again, I felt like I had the disadvantage in this game. I'm playing a shooting list against an army that does it better than I do. Fortunately, his inability to take down my Land Raider and HQs was a huge problem for him. While things like mindshackle scarabs are crazy good, the army still drops in close combat. He ended up with 2 tomb spyders and an HQ left at the end of the game. Another big win.

Round 3: Grey Knights - My opponent for this round wound up playing for first place, so I feel less shitty about getting stomped in this game. He played a psycannon-heavy grey knight list, with Draigo and Paladins as his hammer unit. My army was outclassed in nearly every way this game. I was almost tabled, but I would have won at the end of turn 5 and 6, purely by playing the mission. The game went to 7, and I lost.

Round 4: Orks - This was a game I had expected to win handily, as my shooting enabled me to drop horde armies. My opponent was a guy from my gaming group named Carl, and he brings a bad ass kan wall army to the table. I was on the back foot this whole game, due to two huge factors: 1) he got me to commit my hammer unit way too early, which was a great move by him, and 2) his ability to make kustom force field saves was ridiculous to the point that it made my shooting ineffective. I had a great game though, Carl is a fun guy to play against. And, if anyone is going to beat me, I'm glad it was one of the castle guys.

Round 5: Biker Marines - This game was an easy tabling. Biker command squads don't match up against assault terminators with nullzone in assault, and biker units shouldn't try to outshoot sternguard within rapid fire range. Enough said. My opponent was a great guy, though, he took the demolition laughing and smiling.

Overall, I'm very happy with the way the army performed. I still think that Codex Marines can be a top tier tournament army, but, I feel like the way I approached it could be changed. I'm going to go over some observations I've made while at the tournament this weekend, some will be marine specific, some will not.

I've learned recently that shooting wins games. The top tables at the tournament could all dish out a ridiculous amount of mid to high strength firepower. This is crucial, as that kind of shooting does two things for you: it will take out transports and wound elite infantry easily. For us marine players, that means taking as many heavy bolters, assault cannons, autocannons, and missiles as you can fit. The new list I'm working on will reflect this fact. Yes, you still need some melta in order to deal with AV13+ reliably, but I firmly believe that melta spamming is dead. You just need enough of it to do the job.

While having a good deal of shooting is critical to doing well in the current meta, you can't ignore assault. Almost every army there had some sort of beat stick assault unit. They take the form of terminators, nobs, tyranid warriors, tomb spyders/wraiths, etc. Making sure you're able to get this unit to where it needs to be reliably is important, it's very easy to ignore a deathstar that's walking. It's a good idea to carefully pick your targets as well, don't throw your deathstar against another unless you're positive you're going to win. Your thunderhammer/stormshield terminators are going to be useless if they're tied up with more thunderhammer/stormshield terminators. Another point that was brought to my attention this weekend was the importance of a powerful character with the deathstar - preferably something with eternal warrior. I'm still unsure of this. For example, I feel like Lysander with assault terminators is overkill, as the points you spent on the character may be better placed elsewhere. The presence of characters that buff the unit are a good idea, though. Be it a chaplain or librarian, or both.

Leadership is a pain. Having played Deathwing for so long, I had the luxury of ignoring those annoying checks to watch my guys run away uselessly. At the same time, not being able to fall back when you've put a unit in a crappy situation isn't great either. Stubborn flat out blows, I can't stand it. It's my primary reason for not wanting to take Pedro Kantor all the time. My next list will be using combat tactics, no question. I really like the tactical flexibility being able to fall back gives me.

The last thing that I've begun to consider after this weekend is the value of a disruption unit. This would be a unit that the opponent cannot account for at the beginning of the game, and that is enough of a threat to make them base decisions around it. Great examples of a disruption unit would be ork deffkoptas outflanking, Boss Snikrot, scouts outflanking, outflanking genestealers, deepstriking terminators, etc. If you can get the other player to sweat over what your disruption unit is going to do, it can be a huge benefit, especially if the unit is inexpensive. I'm going to start including outflanking scouts with a powerfist in my lists to try and keep units like devastators and lootas from feeling safe in the back corner.

That's it for today. I'll be posting my new and improved space marine list in the next couple days. For now, what other elements do you think make a competitive list? What is your favorite disruption unit?

-Max