Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Discussion: Winning list at the Seattle GT

I followed a random link the other day to a blog I'd never been to, and discovered the Purgatus has his own blog now (I don't read YTTH much anymore, but I'm assuming Stelek got sick of him posting 3 times a day :-p).  I read a little bit, and found a few mentions of his GT experience at Seattle, which was a little interesting.  Anyways, all talk about Purgatus aside, I wanted to present the winning Seattle list, and give a few thoughts on it, though mostly open up the floor and let others chime in about it.

Cool, here's the link to the post, it's the 3rd army Purgatus played.

I'll type out the list, for those too lazy to go to the site, lol.

2000 points of Marines

Vulkan

10x Assault Terminators w/ 4x Lightning Claws, 6x TH/SS
10x Assault Terminators w/ 4x Lightning Claws, 6x TH/SS
Techpriest w/ Harness, Power Weapon

Tactical Squad, Multimelta, Melta, Combimelta, Power Fist
Tactical Squad, Multimelta, Melta, Combimelta, Power Fist

Land Raider Redeemer w/ Multi-melta (and I presume Extra Armor)
Land Raider Redeemer w/ Multi-melta (and I presume Extra Armor)

This list is somewhat intimidating to me, since it's hard as hell to kill 10 Terminators, and even harder to kill 20.  And once you do, you've gotta kill 2 Land Raiders, and the Tacticals, and Vulkan.  A very steep order, if you ask me.  So, what beats this list?

A few things that I can think of off the top of my head: 
  •  Any other Vulkan list with deepstriking speeders or Melta Attack Bikes that could kill the Raiders, and then run circles around the terminators, picking them off slowly.  Libby w/ Null Zone would for sure help.
  • Double Lash, lol.  Seriously, this would be the perfect matchup for a double lash player.  If any actually existed these days.
  • Dark Eldar skimmer spam + blaster trueborn + incubi to mop up
  • Dark Eldar Wych spam ('wych' I hate to admit lol, since I don't generally like wyches)
  • Some Eldar lists as well, if you kept moving
  • Maybe Tau?  If you destroyed the Raiders fast enough, and had enough ninja suits to JSJ?  Seems doubtful to me though.
  • Blood Angels with an expensive Death Company, or other power weapon spam list
  • Black Templars with lots of Furious Charge LC Termies in Raiders (maybe)
Still, it's an intimidating list, to me (which I almost never think).  Tough to kill that many tough guys.

What do you think?  I want to know what people's honest opinions of this list.  It seems flawed enough to me that it should come up with a bad matchup, yet it won a GT.  How would you play it?  What would you do if you had to play against it?  It's been messing with me, ever since I saw it posted up.  Let me know!

11 comments:

Nikephoros said...

I assume he combat squads the terminators, so the LC termies are in the raiders and the TH/SS are walking.

The list actually seems really susceptible to any firepower list. It has a grand total of two vehicles. Those should both be dead turn 1, regardless of anything else. From then on, it's mech keep away from the terminators as you wear them down and focus on eliminating the relatively easy to kill tacticals.

Skari said...

Dark eldar would eat this list alive.

Dark lances, dissintegrators and overall everything that would make this "elite" list pay for its eliteness.

James Paladin said...

@Nikephoros Got it right on the head.

This list would die to a BloodMech list. Turn one everything nails one raider, turn two techpreists blow the other raider and the armies walking into the predator guns for the rest of the game. Terminators land next to you? Drive away and keep shooting.

Now if this won the event its a show of how well Death Wing armies will become in that kind of environment. Hope it was painted well

Xaereth said...

Nike: I think the way he was doing it (and this is what I'd do too) was footslogging the squads of 10, and putting the tacticals in the raiders.

I think certain builds would beat this list, but some armies would have a rough time of it- Orks come to mind.

I also want to say that popping two Land Raiders on turn one is pretty tough- popping even one would require a fair amount of luck, for most lists. For some lists, popping two in an entire game is doable, but not the cakewalk you suggest :-p

Rez: I agree- Dark Lances pretty much crush this list. I think he'll have to start playing something different at GTs if he wants to keep winning.

Grimnar: Heh, I guess we'll see. I think the biggest strength of this list is how many terminators are in each squad. 5-man squads are decidedly easier to beat in combat.

Unknown said...

ARE YOU SERIOUS, I JUST MOVED AWAY FROM SEATTLE AND NOW THERE IS A GRAND TOURNAMENT, grrrrr.... =(

Beast_a_la_Mode said...

With the new FAQs, Grey Knights, and this it looks like people are trying to make Terminators happen again.

I think this might be a case of someone out metaing the meta, bringing a list that is a pretty hard counter to the medium strength weapon spam everyone uses now.

Commander_Vimes said...

With Tau I typically pop a Raider per turn with below average luck. Popping both first turn would be lucky, but by turn 2 I'd expect both to be dead. The question then would then be if I could kill enough guys before they reached me.

I'd deploy in two castles of Kroot screening Pathfinders, screening Broadsides and Crisis Suits; forcing him to split his forces. My big Kroot and Hound units would actually be pretty effective here. They'll beat the Tacs in combat, and usually beat 5 TH//SS Termies, assuming I can reduce them that much.

Tough, but I think doable.

With my Hybrid Mech/Blob Guard (internet hasn't come up with a catchy name for it yet) I could easily send my suicidal melta platoon and company command squads to take out the Raiders because there isn't any ranged fire to deal with their chimeras.

With the Raiders hopefully dead or disabled in the midfield, I can shoot the crap out of him with 60 First Rank Second Rank lasguns and the sponson plasma cannons from my Russ and Demolisher. Even my Griffin would be a threat because one failed ld8 pin check would screw him up a lot.

The two blobs I field will mulch a Tac Squad trying to assault out of a Raider, and can often grind down 5 Termies. Even if they lose to the Termies, they'll die slow enough that I can finish off anything any the open, so the survivors will be left in front of my Russes and Straken's counter charge.

I think my Guard has the advantage in that match-up.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

My space marines army that I currently play (did not like ho my Ba jump army worked so I am doing conversions) would do fairly well against this list (and it is even only at 1750). I have 10 missle shots and six lascannons, and 4 plasma cannons, 2 combi-meltas, 3 combi-plasma, and too plasma guns .Null zoneitated (?) TH/SS will fall to those plasma cannon shots. I should be able to kill a raider a turn, my shooty terminators can counter charge.... If the Dice gods forgive me for say they do not exist.....

Purgatus said...

Basically a beatable list. I had destroyed one Land Raider, an entire squad of Terminators and was well on my way to wiping the Tactical and Second Terminator Squad when the game ended. The player was quite skilled, and the list is very much a KP denial style list. I failed to bring enough melta to dismech him, which was my fault and will not happen again.

Xaereth said...

Purgatus:

Yeah, I'm personally somewhat of a Melta junkie, and usually advocate people bringing it as often as possible.

That being said, your list struggles to bring far-reaching melta into play. Since you're footslogging with basically everything, the single fang melta squad is about as mobile melta as you can get.

Still, since they were Redeemers against your list, a couple combis could really help you give the Raiders a pause before they got close.

Should be fun to see what tweaks you give your list to give yourself a better chance against Raiders. One other option is giving the Thunderwolves Hammers instead of claws- S10 helps a lot vs. Mech :)