11.22.2011

Prep the Mantas, Shas'el, We're Going In!

So, I'm off to my FLGS this weekend for their '2-Day 40K' event. It's a pretty big thing, actually. There are two different tournaments happening on Saturday, one from 10-4 and one from 4-10, and then the winners in those two tournaments face off against each other on Sunday. Personally, I have no real hope that it'll be a '2-Day' event for me; I firmly expect to go in there, get my battlesuited backside kicked up one side of the table and down the other, and have a great time doing it. But hey, miracles do happen!

I've been tweaking my list a bit in the run-up, inspired by my performance last time around. Helpfully, it's the same points total. One of the things I noticed was that, despite being an apparently cheap army, I actually found myself outnumbered on several occasions. Once by old-Codex Necrons, of all things! And while the firepower I had, almost exclusively mounted on my battlesuits, was solid, I didn't have nearly enough of it. With more guns, even more inferior guns, I could have had a solid chance of forcing the Necrons to phase out for a win in Game 2, and possibly shot my way free of those all-encompassing Tyranid swarms in Game 3. Now, I love my battlesuits, but if those dozen-odd battlesuits are, not my central striking power, but my sole striking power, something's gone wrong. Fire warriors may not be the best troops stats-wise, but those 30" S5 AP5 Rapid Fire weapons aren't bad, and torrenting is a recognized anti-MEq strategy. So I'm going to drop the two HQ bodyguard battlesuits, and in exchange for their six shots (eight within 12") and four wounds (two of which will be lost to every S8+ weapon that hits them), I'll either be picking up a dozen shots with a dozen wounds each and some spare points to upgrade my 'el, or six shots with six wounds and a fully-loaded Piranha.

I haven't entirely decided which way to go, yet. On the one hand, with twelve more fire warriors I could bump two squads to the full twelve, and still have a six-tau team to wait off the board for late-game objective grabbing, plus buy a plasma rifle for my 'el to give him serious variable utility (missile pod, plasma rifle and airbursting fragmentation device; any two of these will pretty much always be useful) and maybe throw something else in there with the last couple of points. On the other hand, a Piranha with fusion blaster, targeting array, disruption pod and flechette discharger is simultaneously a solid roadblock and a decent tank-hunter, along with providing another unit of drones to contest objectives and a hull to hide my battlesuits behind. Increased protection and a potentially-vital fast-moving melta-weapon, or increased output of firepower and bodies on the field to bubblewrap my battlesuits?

Decisions, decisions...

1 comment: