Evolution of the GT List

I’ve now played 5 games with the list I posted last week and I’m beginning to get the hang of it. I’ve played one game against grey knights, one against wolves, one against biker marines, one against a Wraithguard Army, and finally one against Necron Flying Circus (I’ll talk about this is a separate post).

The Good

It’s super resilient. Everything in the list is hard to kill. The Hammerheads are AV13 and usually have a 3+ save. The D’fish are AV12 and usually have a 2+ cover save. The Fire warriors are in their fish until they need to get out. The Broadsides have six 4++ ablative wounds (their Shield Drones, and the shield drones from both commanders) a 2+ armour save, a 4+ cover save, and leadership 9. Twenty eight fearless boyz with a 5+ cover save from the KFF are pretty hard to shift. And finally, the tetras are often hard to draw LOS to (they are very low to the ground), and usually have a 2+ cover save.

The Boyz are fantastic bubble wrap, much better than Kroot. In only one of my games did something assault anything other than the Orks.

The plasma cannons on the Hammerheads, combined with the Tetras stripping cover saves, are just death to marines. In the game against the biker army, I was wiping out a unit of bikes per turn with the Hammerheads alone (Usually 6 marker light hits, each Hammerhead picks up 3, 2 to strip cover and one to make them BS5. This meant that usually all 8 shots hit, and (allowing for a couple of 1 on the “to wound” rolls) it produced 6-7 dead bikes!

The Broadsides were, as usual, great at taking out heavy armour (in the biker list he had 2 Predators, both of which died very quickly, before they did very much at all). However, having them fitted with the TL plasma guns, and combining them with both commanders makes them absolutely deadly at close range too. In the game against wolves, my opponents was running three thunder wolves with 2 battle leaders on wolves. They had just murdered a unit of boyz, and were inches away from the Broadsides. With the help of a rapid firing squad of fire warriors, and some marker lights from the Tetras, they evaporated in a hail of Railgun slugs and plasma shots.

Tetras. What can I say – they are just amazing. Marker lights were always awesome, but the platforms on which you could buy them (essentially Pathfinders, Skyrays, and Stealth suits) were pretty rubbish. They combine so well with the Hammerhead’s plasma cannons. In the game against the wraith guard army, being able to strip cover from fortuned wraith guard, and then just punching straight through their 3+ armour save was golden! Same against the bikes. One highlight was stripping all the cover from a Harlequin Deathstar and turning them into a red mist with a unit of rapid firing fire warriors! And they are so resilient….in all 5 games I only lost one, even against people who knew what they did and were targeting them from the get go.

Firewarriors. I take it all back. Fire warriors in D’fish with 2+ cover saves, and reliable marker light support are now pretty good. They aren’t fantastic, but they provide good torrent of fire which my list was lacking before. In my game against the bike marines, 2 squads (with marker light support), rapid firing into a bike squad killed it.

The not so good

The Commanders. The Shasels were there to do 2 things. First to hang out with the Broadsides in the first turn or 2 to provide 4 more shield drones, and a leadership boost, and second to support the  fire warriors when they got out of their ‘fish. They worked well in the first role, however it was hard to get them to work in the second. Nine times out of 10 the Fire warriors were getting out some distance from the commanders, and they were not in a position to attach to the squad. In one game I ran them behind the Devilfish until the warriors got out, which sort of worked. However, I found I typically wasn’t getting out until turn 2 or 3, which meant that for 2 or 3 turn the Commanders were doing very little.

Where they did work well was as fire support for the broadsides when things came in close and needed to be hit hard with plasma, but his only happened in 2 of the 5 games.

The boyz. I know I said they were great, and they really were. However, they had 2 draw backs. Firstly, they are very unwieldy. Moving 30 boyz around is really hard, and they’re slow. Inevitably some of them are in cover and are slowed down by needing to move through that cover. Getting them to far away objectives is difficult. Also, as bubble wrap, they are almost too good. The beauty of Kroot is that they stopped an assaulting unit and then evaporated in one assault phase, leaving the assaulting unit to be rapid fired to death in my next  turn. The trouble with a 25+ man squad of boyz is that they are too resilient. Against a lot of assaulting units they will get held up in combat for too long. That’s fine if you can reposition out of charge range – but that’s kinda hard with broadsides. The problem is unpredictability – you do not know when they will break.

Scoring. The list only has 4 scoring units, and all of them have other jobs to do (torrent of fire for the Fire warriors, and bubble wrap for the boyz). If possible I need other units to do nothing but score.

Reliance on Tetras. The units that makes everything work are the Tetras. Without marker light support the Plasma Cannons are OK, but not great, and the fire warriors become pretty mediocre again. If as a result of poor positioning by me, or lucky/unluck dice I lose the Tetras in the first 2 turns, my army is severely crippled. The other problem with the Tetras is that you want to keep them in terrain as much as possible, preferably ruins. In one game, the first time I flew them into ruins I rolled double ones and immobilised both of them!

The Changes

After a deal of thought I’m going to drop one Shasel and replace him with 2 squads of Kroot. I’ll upgrade the remaining Shasel with Iridium Armour (giving him and his Drones a 2+ armour save), and will re-task him simply baby sitting the Broadsides and adding fire support when things get too close. That leaves my Firewarrior squads more mobile, although a little more fragile.

Also, the addition of 2 squads of 10 kroot gives me more scoring options, leaving the Boyz and the Fire warriors to focus more on their jobs of bubble wrap (and maybe getting an objective) and torrent of fire (and maybe getting an objective). Thanks to the Ork FAQ, the Kroot also benefit from the KFF’s 5+ cover save.

I’m also going to give the Tetras Sensor Spines, allowing them to ignore difficult terrain.

As for the problem with Boyz being too good in assault, I think I’ve fund a way round that in the rules…..more on that in a later post.

So the final list is

HQ

Shasel, XV81, Fusion Blaster, Plasma Rifle, Multitracker, Iridium Armour, HW Shield Drone Generator, 2 Shield Drones.

Troops

12 Fire warriors, Devil Fish with Disruption Pods

12 Fire Warriors, Devil Fish with Disruption Pods

10 Kroot

10 Kroot

Fast Attack

Tetra with Targeting Array, Disruption Pods and Sensor Spines

Tetra with Targeting Array, Disruption Pods and Sensor Spines

Heavy Support

Hammerhead Gunship. Plasma Cannons, Burst Cannons, Multitracker, Disruption Pods, Black Sun Filter.

Hammerhead Gunship. Plasma Cannons, Burst Cannons, Multitracker, Disruption Pods, Black Sun Filter.

Broadside Team Leader with TL Plasma Rifles, Multitracker, HW Drone Controller, HW Black Sun Filter, HW Target Lock, 2 Shield Drones

Broadside with TL Plasma Rifles, Multitracker

Broadside with TL Plasma Rifles, Multitracker

Fortifications

Aegis Defence Line

Allies

Big Mek KFF

25 Shoota Boyz

26 Shoota Boyz

The only change I might make is to the Shasel. I don’t think there is any point in running an XV81 any more (i.e. the forge world variant with SMS). I might just run him as a standard Sunforge i.e. with plasma rifle and fusion gun. That would give me 20 points to spend on more boyz!

EYIG