|
If you remember, back in my State of the Warp Address I was going to be spending the year on 40k projects. The first one was to get my Tau army completed. Assembled, painted, ready to go, plus get an understanding of how they work and have a variety of army styles available to play with them. I am (finally!) in the last stages of that. The other two projects: Deathwing and Dark Eldar. These haven't gotten much work from me, since I've been working on the Tau. (Admittedly, this was intentional neglect, since if I started working with another army, I might not ever finish the Tau. Now that the Tau are nearly finished (need to paint crews for the last 3 Piranha and base a few models, but that's it. While it's taken (much) longer than I thought, it is nearly complete and I can turn my attention to other projects. I have gone back and forth about which army (Dark Eldar or Doom Eagles/Deathwing) to work on next. I came across an interesting description of a style of play that appealed to me and fits in well with a Terminator army. While I'll go into more details later, suffice to say that I will be revamping my Terminator army next. While that means my Dark Eldar will have to wait longer before seeing the tabletop, they'll just have to live with that. Before I explain what I am looking for and how I might go about it, let me explain a bit about how my old Terminator army ran.
My old Terminator army ran in two different flavors. They both shared a few common threads. Being an army based around Terminators, they never had very many models, but each model was very powerful and tough. The first version of the army focused on their power in close combat. I mounted them in LandRaiders and slammed them forward into the enemy. In 1500pts, I got a Commander with a command squad of 4 Terminators and 2 squads of 5 Terminators, plus 3 LandRaiders to carry them all. When I managed to get them all into combat in a focused group, they hit really hard and did pretty well, but I wasn't very good with them. Then I tried a walking army focusing on their shooting and toughness. For a Terminator-based army, it had a decent number of models on the board and had decent firepower at range. At 1500pts, it featured about 30 Terminators and a bunch of cyclone missile launchers. The basic plan was to march toward the enemy and use the missiles to nail choice targets while my Terminators closed in. In addition to their heavy armor to keep them alive, this army also had an Apothecary to keep them alive a little bit longer. Again, I never got terribly good with this army, but it was fun to play. It's been at least two editions since I played this army, so it definitely needs an update. In addition, I found a description of a playstyle that I'm very interested in that would fit well with a Terminator army, so I'll have to take a look at what it might need to adapt to this playstyle. The playstyle that I heard about is known as The Way of the Water Warrior This is not a playstyle that I came up with, but it really resonates with me and it's something that I've wanted to achieve for a long time, but I've never really thought of it as a coherent playstyle and thus, I didn't know how to get there. The basic idea behind this is to have a very, very flexible force that can play in a totally different way depending on the mission and the opponent. The primary way to do this is to have every unit be effective in movement, shooting and assault. While being effective in shooting and assault is fairly self-explanatory, effectiveness in movement might require a bit more. Basically, it has to be able to move _without_ losing effectiveness at either shooting or assault. Terminators are a great example of this sort of flexibility, as they have Storm Bolters that can fire at full effectiveness whether or not they moved, and provide solid firepower. In addition, their power weapons and power fists ensure that they have a great deal of power in assault. While other units besides Terminators can have that flexibility, I already have a bunch of Terminators sitting around, so this looks like just the ticket for me.
There are several armies that have possibilities as Water armies. DeathWing is the army list that I used to use. Being an army based around Terminators, it was a natural choice. Really, at the time, it was pretty much the only choice for an army based around Terminators. However, there are other armies that can incorporate a lot of Terminators in various ways. There are Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines as well. In fact, I remember a Chaos Space Marine army based around Terminators from a long time back. Probably toward the end of 3rd edition, I think. It had a Lord and 3 units of 8 Terminators, plus a few units of Daemons as Troops and leading elements. While I don't necessarily want to emulate that, it does give me the thought that Chaos might be a useful direction to look. My first thought, though, is DeathWing, and so I picked up the latest Dark Angels Codex to see what's shaking with the boys in Bone. It took me quite a while to get used to the new layout of the DeathWing options. The new format is easier to understand, I think, as it lists all the options with each entry. It's just a big departure from the way GW Codicies used to work. After quite a bit of searching, I realized that the only way to field a DeathWing army is to include the special character Belial. If you take him, Terminators become Troops choices. Aside from that, there is _no difference_ from the standard Dark Angels list. This is a huge change. The old DeathWing options were several HQ options, Dreadnaughts, Terminators and LandRaiders. That's it. No other tanks, no Scouts, no Bikes, no standard Marines, etc. That makes for a lot more flexibility. The main thing that interests me (that wasn't part of the original list) is RavenWing Bike Squadrons. They have high mobility, solid firepower on the move and decent assault capability as well, so they fit the bill for the Water Warrior army. Let's take a quick look at each of the units I plan to include in the army, and how I would equip them if I do choose DeathWing as the way to go....
Taking Belial at 130pts is the only way to take a DeathWing army, and you can't really take any different equipment for him. On the other hand, he does allow you to make one standard Terminator into an Apothecary with Narthecium/Reductor. Considering that he can save multiple Terminators from dying, that's an extra 30 points well spent. I have a note from one of my previous incarnations of a Terminator army about an Apothecary saving 5 or 6 Terminators during a single game. That's saving roughly 200-270pts! While that's definitely above-average, even saving a single Terminator during a game would more than make those 30pts back.
that brings me to this approximate list for 1500pts... If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know |
