Alright alright alright. Loyalist vs Traitor in the first GW ran and hosted event of 2nd Edition. We have thoughts, opinions and of course some pictures to go along with this. I’m here too! - Prince

The Casual

The List

For this event I wanted to take something new, but that would still fit inside what I broadly had the most of. So I took the Eskaton Imperative Rite of War with a lot of Rhinos. Rough list was as follows:

• Marduk + 9 Inner Circle Knights inside a Spartan (flare shield, all the lascannons).
• Master of Signal
• Tactical marines in rhinos (x2).
• 10 Interemptors in rhinos (multi-melta’s) x2.
• Xiphon.
• Sicaran Omega.
• Lascannon Heavy weapons squad, joined by the Master of Signal
• Scorpius battery of 2 tanks.
  3k exact. And all told not a bad list to take. I felt it was thematic with a lot of Plasma and it kind of embodied that scene from Angels of Caliban where the Dreadwing are unleashed, with multiple units standing ready and near transports before unleashing all hell on the enemy. To say the games didn’t always go exactly this way is… let’s talk about them shall we.

The Games

First up let’s mention something straight out the gate, there were more Loyalists at the event than Traitors (blame Eventbrite for this). Myself, a Blood Angel and an Iron Hands player were essentially asked to play on teh Traitor side for the event. Jokes aside, we rolled off for it as that’s the fairest option since none of us really wanted to swap sides.
The Iron Hands player rolled a 1. And that will explain why my first game was against…

• G1: IH Fury of the Ancients : This variant was essentially 7 Contemptors (2 melee, 2 melta/fist, 2 Kheres/fist and the lascannon/fist Warlord), 4 Leviathans and 1 Xiphon. Ended in a loss, I’d managed to kill 1 Leviathan in melee with Sedras and the Knights, 4 Contemptors and the Xiphon were essentially dealt with by the Lascannon squad alone. Fury is rough to play into, especially if they have a lot of Leviathans’s, and Iron Hands makes it even tougher. My Lascannon squad could comfortably drop a Contemptor a round (casualties depending, etc) but even with 4 Hammers and Sedras giving preferred enemy sometimes you just can’t drop a Leviathan.

• G2: IW Drop Pod Assault: See our Tryhard for this list, because he’s who I played into. I’d played into this list before we went down for the event and it’s a hard-counter to what I was bringing. I go first and have to jump out of rhinos and spread a little to try and take board control, scoring the objective in that turn. Then he drops. By the end of his first turn I have 1 rhino with tacticals, most of the Lascannon squad with Master of Signal, and Sedras with the Inner Circle Knights left on the table that can do anything. The Xiphon was shot down by his Tyrants. I did manage to drop Perty in my t2 but it cost me the entire remaining Knights unit and Sedras to do so. At the start of his t2 I had maybe 600pts left on the table and really he could mop up that game at his leisure.¹

• G3: TS Magnus and all the dudes: How best to describe this list. 1 Xiphon, 2 heralds, and lots of infantry. Breachers, Heavy weapon teams², jetbike Herald to go with e of those speedy speed boys. Magnus auto-casting to fly that big brick of Breachers halfway across the table. Marvellous. Honestly a lot of fun this game, won it by killing Magnus in melee ³ and it was close, even though I wiped out near 2.5k of his list. DA are really, really good at killing big blocks of Infantry, especially with Interemptors and Inner Circle knights. Return fire with Lascannon squads will hurt Recon squad. And let’s not forget the sheer havoc that a pair of Scorpius can cause to infantry.
  Because I learned a lot from this game, the player was incredibly chill and fun, and it was so novel to play into Thousand Sons this got my favourite game of the weekend.

• G4: AL Armoured Spearhead: An interesting list, couple of Venators, 1 Kratos, Spartan with some recently acquired Red Butchers, 2 pairs of Volkite Sabres, Deredeo and tacticals in rhinos. I get first blood by returning fire with the Lascannon squad into a pair of Volkite Sabres that thought they could remove them fast. He locked down my Spartan with the Venators soo the Knights inside had to get out and start walking across the table to beat up a Spartan and slap around the Butchers when they charged in to me. Those Scorpius I mentioned took out his Tactical squads that were trying to score an objective each turn. At the end of game it was 4vp to 3vp in my favour, but I’m playing Eskaton Imperative and he had units alive in his deployment zone allowing him to score up to d3 vp… and he rolled the big 3. Honestly still a good game and would play again because you play the objectives against this kind of list and you’re probably going to do well.

• G5: Grudge match⁴, The Prince’s SoH: The Prince here and I have a long-running feud. 1st Legion vs the Warmasters Legion seems to be where we’re going with it in 2nd edition. And since we don’t often get to play a game against each other we had this one setup for us. The scenarios is 1 objective that scatters around if you score it, beginning of the game it landed in his deployment zone and stayed there until the end of his 2nd turn. Honestly it looked like it was going to be another rough game, his Cerberus and Spartan pair were popping transports even if his Recon squad did lose a sniper fight with my Lascannon squad. And then the objective scattered into both an area affected by the Eskaton Imperative⁵ and right next to 10 Interemptors, 10 Tacticals and not far from Sedras and his Knights that had stepped out of a now ruined Spartan. It got a little scrappy but I stuck it out and held onto that objective bouncing back towards his lines to claim the victory for the Lion.
  This got a bit scrappy, but again if you’re not playing into the really tough things (3+ contemptors, all pods, all tanks) the Dreadwing units can really clear the board with our anti-infantry templates.

Thoughts on What I Brought

• I love the Xiphon, but it was shot down every single game. Helical Targeting Dreadnoughts or even snap-firing Lascannons squads with an Augury scanner will make trouble for Flying vehicles.
• Lascannon Heavy squads (without an Augury scanner) are 275pts. 285pts with one if you’re not bringing along a Master of Signal or equivalent. These will do so much work and were absolutely my best unit the entire weekend. They blew up multiple Spartans, Cerberus, Flyers, Sabres, Recon squads, Dreadnoughts and when they ran out of good targets started shooting into infantry. Every game they slapped something around. I cannot stress just how good the humble Lascannon is in the game right now.
• Anyone that says ‘it’s totally easy to get an entire army with Sedras’s Preferred Enemy bonus all the time’ has not played on terrain heavy maps. Every board had 7-8 terrain pieces of which at least 2 were in your deployment zones (and they would not always be ones you could slot the Lascannons on to snipe every target from on high). I played a few games were I could build a parking lot but doing so would get in eth way of actually moving so in a few of the games my Tacticals and even the Interemptors didn’t gain the bonus.
  Of course I made sure the Scorpius and Lascannon squad had it every game because that absolutely shreds.
• As long as you’re clearly marking out the Eskaton Danger Zones you will control the board. Most players this weekend didn’t want to go into dangerous terrain. I recommend getting some 12" diameter cut-outs otherwise you’re always stopping the game to measure 6" from the marker and you will slow things down (this is why I brought 12" circular zones with me)
• Our unique units absolutely shred infantry, Inner Circle will out-fight a lot of things (unit was down a few models before taking the charge from 6 Red Butchers in the AL list and only lost 2 models, wiping the unit that charged them)
• Reactions. Reactions. Reactions. These will change up how you play the game and you have to think and plan your turn for the inevitable Return Fire / extra movement / Hold the Line. To go with this if you have a unit that can take Augury scanners, do it.
• Speaking of useful equipment, though it didn’t come up much because of mistakes on some readings of the event missions, Vox’s. You do not want the -1 Ld penalty from Night Fighting, especially if someone decides they want to play a Pinning focussed army.
• Hold the line is better than Overwatch except if they charge into something with Wall of Death. Denying charge bonuses is very, very strong. It’s what made all the difference against the Red Butchers.

Looking towards November

Casual Stormwing?

I don’t want to play tanks. I have done it enough for now and it’s been a common theme for me for some years. Time to play something different. And there’s not much more different than going from ’everything has a taxi’ to ‘Oops, (nearly) all Infantry’. The rough idea I have is 40 Tactical marines, 20 Assault marines, some Apothecaries, the Lascannon squad⁶, a Leviathan, a Deredeo and the Lion holding the line with a bodyguard of Deathwing Companions. It wil get tweaks between now and November, but I am not taking a model that has AV to November unless I have to.

The Prince

Hoo, my turn! Not going to lie, I was a little nervous going into this event, as I had planned to get a game of two of the new system in pre-event. Unfortunately I didn’t, and I had run out of painting time due to heat exhaustion so had to make a few last minute changes! I had at least spent my bedridden time reading and re-reading my rulebooks, and filling them with post-it notes to keep me on track as to how the game played… Not going to lie, it served me well.

The List

So my army is a direct stem from my Zone Mortalis Sons of Horus List, drawing from the same base of Reavers and Breachers, but now with added Vehicles. The Rough List and strategy was:

• Abaddon with 5 Justaerin (with a Multi-Melta) in Deepstrike
• Master of Signal with 5 Nemesis Bolter armed seekers
• 8 Reavers with all Chainaxes in a Rhino with Searchlight
• 8 Reavers with Powersword/Carsoran Axes in a Rhino with Melta and Searchlight
• 10 Breachers with some Volkite in a Spartan with Searchlight
• 5 Jump Pack Destroyers with rad missile launcher and phosphex (deepstriking)
• Xiphon
• Contemptor with Lascannons and Fist
• Cerberus Heavy Tank Destroyer with Lascannons and Searchlight

The list was reasonably straight forward. Forgoing the Reavers flanking to allow for 4 Searchlights to light up enemy key targets during the all too dangerous Night Fighting. Whilst the Cerberus and the Spartan pop enemy tanks, the rhinos move up to allow Reavers to take the mid field. Then from turn 2 the Deepstrike assault comes in to charge enemy units, pincering backline forces.

That was the plan. It did not survive contact.

The Games

So for games I got a really great mix of opponents, several of whom I knew, some of whom I was meeting for the first time. All 5 games were really fun, and as my first 5 games of Heresy 2.0 I really did enjoy them.

Game 1 My first game I was drawn against the lovely Gaz of the Knights Errant Podcast (check them out! ⁷) It was the first game of 2.0 for both of us, so we took a fair bit of time just reading and re-reading rules as they came up. He was running his fabulous blood angels day of revelation force. With 2 Leviathans, 2 Sicarans (one normal, one plasma), some rapier carriers, and a Rhino full of tacticals on the board, and 2 squads of assault marines with apothecaries, 10 angels tears with moritat, a jump contemptor and a praetor off the table ready to come down from turn 2. With 3 objectives on the table that scored at the end of our player turn, it was all about getting in and getting some combat rolling to control the points. This game did contain one of my biggest foibles - continuing to forget that the Cerberus is Ordnance - although that didn’t stop it absolutely wrecking face throughout the game. After demolishing the Plasma Sicaran turn 1, and battering the remaining units with my various lascannons and sniper fire whilst snapping some ke early points, turn 2 saw both our deepstrike coming in. Abaddon began his game well, mishapping into the rapiers and being deployed by Gaz far away from the enemy lines, with the deepstrike then becoming disordered, and the destroyers ending up even further away.⁸ His troops also scattered in various directions due to some canny blocking on my part, and consequently the entire game devolved into units chasing each other around the board, the two dreadnoughts smashing into each other brutally, and his gunfire really playing havoc on my combat squads. Although the Reavers did manage to make it into combat with one of the assault units, and despite being lower in numbers and receiving the charge, they actually won!⁹ With all the back and forth though, very few units were able to get to score in the late game, resulting in a 5:5 draw (we both agreed this was an incredibly satisfying finish).

Game 2 This game was against Mark, with another Day of Revelations list! This one however was a little more stabby, with Sanguinius, 10 Dawnbreakers, 3 Squads of Assault Marines, 3 Land Speeders and a Jump Dread in reserve, whilst 2 Rhinos with Tacticals, another contemptor, and a Land Raider began on the table. I had the iniative, and the objective was to hold a single point in the centre of the table, that gave 3vps to the active player if they controlled it at the end of their turn! I seized it turn one, but despite hitting his units hard with my reserves, could not hold back the huge wave of assault marines that came in during huis turn 2. The Xiphon, Abaddon, the destroyers, and my Reavers would all utilise their turn 2/3 strafing and gunning at the horde of red armoured sons of Sanguinius, but the big block of fearless Dawnbreakers just could not be shifted. Despite that though, by the beginning of turn 3 Mark believed he had the game in the bag, with our two contemptors duelling on the victory point, and no less than two depleted units of assault marines waiting to capture it when my dread fell. It was a secure 3 vps, and a neat victory in the bag…

It was not. My contemptor did die, exploding in a full 6" blast. This blast wiped out several marines from each squad, enough to force morale checks for the pair… morale checks without sergeants (who had been lost to sniper fire in prior shooting)¹⁰. Unfortunately both units break and run far, leaving the objective open. Except I have no scoring units left on the field. But I did have the seekers, and they could see Sanguinius on 1 wound… Turn 4 contained one excellent round of shooting, and one poor roll for regrouping. Netting me a surprising (and undeserved) victory!

Game 3 Saw the sons face off against Saul Tarvitz and Ruperts Loyalist Emperor’s Children. Using Maru Skara the force had 10 Sunkillers with an Apothecary, 10 Assault marines, a Leviathan, 10 seekers in a rhino, a sicaran, and 2 units of tacticals starting on the table, with Saul and 10 Phoenix Guard (in a Land Raider), 10 Palatine Blades, and a dual kheres contemptor in outflank. It was a lovely setup that played into all the strengths of the 3rd Legion. And with the objectives disappearing after being scored for the first time the game promoted speed and agressive play. Consequently I was crushed.

With my units unable to move into the middle ground to hold territory for fear of lascannon and seeker barrage, I quickly found myself by turn 2 pinned down, and facing a lot of combat units suddenly in my rear lines. My reserves saw me forced to play defensively, bringing Abaddon’s troops into the backline of my own deployment to counteract Saul (whilst the Xiphon blew up almost the moment it arrived). For a brief moment I did seem to grasp at the upper hand - detonating the Land Raider, and decimating the Palatine Blades with shooting, and the Xiphon managing the immobilise the Sicaran before dying. But despite Abaddon’s Justaerin slowly butchering the Phoenix Guard, the rest of the table was lost, as the Leviathan ripped up my heavy armour, and assault units and kraken bolters tore apart my Reavers. It felt like a close game, but the final results were a solid victory to the loyalists.

Game 4 The First game of Sunday was against the first of two Dark Angels (Angels of Death anyone?). My forces found themselves up against Ben Greaves and his beautiful Dark Angels force. Having admired Ben’s work since first seeing it at a weekender years ago, I was really hyped to face against them on the table. With a rather unique deployment (blame Marduk Sedras) and the initiative in his favour, Ben’s fury of the Ancient List with 4 contemptors, 20 Interemptors, 10 Knights, a Sicaran Arcus, 2 tacticals in rhinos, and 3 Land Raiders, was an disconcerting opponent though. His opening shooting alone stripped 4 hull points off my Spartan with a lot of 6s for lascannon damage, and quickly made me ditch my lightly armoured rhinos. My return volley destroyed 2 of his Land Raiders (apparently a first for the event), and killed a number of their interemptors, as well as moving to hold the objective in my territory. I was unsure, but confident I could give him a bloody nose!

I was a little wrong. Turn 2 saw the contemptors get into good shooting range of my own contemptor and Reavers, taking plenty of wounds of the dread, whilst his lascannons continued to seriously punish my heavy armour (destroying the Spartan). Abaddon then proceeded to cock up his deepstrike (although the Xiphon did arrive fine), and was punished by the Arcus for his arrogance.¹¹ I thought I’d seize the initiative and charge Ben’s dreads before they charged me, however I failed to do a single wound with either my own dread or the Reavers! From then on the rest of the game was a mop up operation for the Dark Angels, and by the end they had scored an insurmountable number of victory points. In return I had a single Reaver chieftain, who didn’t even damage a rhino with 4 chainxe attacks… Oh dear.

Game 5 Game 5 was against a Casual Dark Angels player. Hoo boy was it Chaotic. I know Lee has explained it a little, but I’ll give my view of it.

Turn 1 and 2 were entirely in my favour. My Cerberus happily popped his sicaran first, and then his Spartan, whilst the rest of my force consolidated on the objective, took control of what area I needed, and held a line. Abaddon even came down in the right place, destroying a Rhino and routing the Interemptors that used to exist inside it. Despite the loss of the Xiphon and my seekers to the massed lascannons, I felt very confident at the end of my turn 2.

Then the objective moved into the danger zone. A danger zone controlled by 10 intermptors and 10 tacticals, and the overwatching eye of 10 lascannons… And if I didn’t get the objective back, my early 4 point lead was going to head downhill quickly.

And could I get the point? Could I hell as like. Reavers were shot to bits by enemy fire, the Justaerin were decimated by Scorpius rounds, the dread lost in combat to tacticals, the Cerberus took more HP off itself then Lee’s lascannons did before they killed it. On the far side of the table my second reaver squad (who had been sneaking up on the lascannons) broke after losing 2 men, and ran straight into the inner circle knights and Sedras… Meanwhile the objective kept itself solidly in places the DA tacticals could get to, securing Lee first2 points, then 3 points, then another 4. The game ended 9:4, with every unit but Abaddon and a sole Rhino routed or destroyed.

(Didn’t lose anyone to dangerous terrain though!)

My Thoughts on the matter.

I’m going to be brief, as I’m sure some of my thoughts:

• Weapon Skill makes a huge difference. I was in a lot of combat this weekend, and got to see every part of that combat table. If you aren’t equal or higher in weapon skill, you better have a damn good reason to be in combat as hitting on 5s is not friendly or useful. Too many people got caught out on the Reavers having WS5 and counter attack, same with Palatine Blades.

• Strength is more important than AP, and High strength AP2 is King. Especially when facing terminators. As so many models are now multi wound, having high strength and being able to punch through with more dice is far more useful that being AP2. Things like the scorpius, the sicaran Arcus, and mass plasma and lascannon fire are utterly brutal, and I don’t see 10 man lascannon squads going away any time soon because of it.

• Don’t neglect one half of the game. I brought a lot of combat, but minimal heavy shooting (from my infantry), meaning a lot of my opponents shooting phase went without any good retort. Bring a heavy weapons squad, or support squad, or just a tank with defensive weapons, and use those shooting reactions to really punish an opponent. Similarly make sure you have some combat potential in your list, or else again you risk ceding a whole section of the game to your opponent, especially when some legions can end up charging you in your own turn!

• Augury scanners need tweaking. Or at least the interception reaction does. I had 5 a turn should I have felt like it, and the only thing that saved my oppoenents with reserves was that other than the Helical dread with lascannons and 5 nemesis bolters, I rarely had the range. But it seems to be the only reaction you can’t max out on. And whilst thats great vs Drop Pod lists, it sucks ass when I’m only bringing a couple of reserves on, and the entire enemy force could be shooting them!

• Deepstriking is fun now, less random, and being able to assault is brilliant. Similarly being able to assault units who have fallen out of destroyed vehicles is also briliant. It makes up a nice balance with the shooting focus the game tends to have, allowing dedicated combat units to get in easier.

BUT

• Non Assault transports are very thin on the ground. Especially dedicated transports. The Dreadclaw has lost assault vehicle, Rhinos never had it, and nothing can take a Spartan as a dedicated transport now¹². You either need costly Land Raiders, or your boys are footslogging/ deepstriking on foot!

Looking to November

I’ve already begun tinkering for November, and although I am being careful on what I buy, theres a few key changes to make.

1. Swap the breachers out for tacticals. I can get the same firepower in a Rhino for much cheaper.
2. Reavers need assault transports - so I either swap one squad out to the Spartan, or try to get Land Raiders for them.
3. Sicaran Arcus. It fits the ‘we dug this equipment out of the hold’ / ‘Our job is to behead enemy value targets’ really nicely. And with the Master of Signal spotting for it, it can stay safe through the game. This does however come at the cost of the destroyers. Although thats a considerable uptick in damage output, so I’m not too concerned there.
4. Cerberus stays. Its too bloody cool, and too bloody rare, to not be using it!

The only big thing is I’m a little nervous as to what we’ll see, as apparently all factions will have workarounds/lists by then. And as a Solar Auxilia and Mechanicus player (just some of my 6 Heresy Era Armies) I’m intrigued as to what they’ll produce, and whether just arming the Arcus with Neutron Warheads will be enough…

We’ll see!