I have a couple of e-mails about Draigowing

I have a couple of e-mails about Draigowing so I will take a moment to answer them.

Dan writes:

Hi there! I thoroughly enjoy your blog, first off. Very well written and with interesting topics. Also it's nice to see someone else who appreciates insanely elite armies. The old chaos chosen Terminators were my favorite unit and now Paladins are the closest I can get to them. How ironic...

Thanks Dan, although I must say that if this blog is one thing it is not well written! Chaos Chosen were crazy in the last chaos codex. They were the most customizable unit in the game. I saw some 5-man units running around that cost over 500 points!

Anyway I had two questions for you that I hoped you could answer.

First, I run my Draigowing similarly to yours except that I put in a Vindicare in place of one of the Dreads. Why do you favor more Psyfle Dread saturation over some of the tricky benefits of the Vindicare (not to mention his AT capabilities)?

A Vindicare can be interchangeable with a dreadnaught; it is just a matter of what you are looking for. A Vindicare can be shot down by multiple strength 8 shots (like a dread), but the assassin can also be killed by small arms fire though, so you can make the argument that he is less durable. The Dread is more mobile, can start in reserve come on the board and shoot. Also dreads are better when shooting at squadrons and low armored vehicles compared to the Vindicare which is better at taking out high AV (13+). They can also assault and tie up units that struggle to kill dreads in hand-to-hand. The Dread also can do more damage with 4 shots at strength 8 to infantry. While the Vindicate cannot do that kind of damage to infantry, it can mess up one enemy model pretty good.

I think it is just a matter of play style and preference. I ran my old Demonhunters with 3 dreads, and I just like them.  

Second question, how do you deal with Darklight spam DE? I haven't faced my friend's DE with my Draigowing yet, but his list wastes my JetSeer Council list. I've only beaten his Darklight spam with my hybrid shooty Eldar. Anyway, with the amount of S8/Ap2 he has, it seems like a really uphill battle for me. Any thoughts?

Cheers man!
Dan

Well DE can be a problem. It takes a little bit of practice and know-how. All I can do is give you some pointers.

Hold the center of the board: You have a 24” range (plus a 6” move) so they can’t hide from you.

Combat Squad: You need to shot at as many targets as possible. They will be gunning you down, but you need to be knocking as many targets out of the air at the same time. You need to outlast them.

Hug cover: With Sanctuary this will slow down their damage from darklight weapons.

Take Psybolt ammo with stormbolters: This is devastating to DE. You have a ton of shooting, and strength 5 knocks their sailboats out of the air.

Target priority: You want to get the Ravagers with your Dreadnaughts because they will be in the rear, and they should be able to take out AV11 even with flicker fields and cover saves.

Target Priority #2: Depending on the situation you will either want to shoot at the Venoms with Trueborn or Warriors. If they just have a few Troop units in an objective game, take them out. Otherwise if they have a lot of Trueborn with blasters you will want to kill them.  

Know your ranges: If you stun a venom the guys inside can’t shoot either, also if they move over 6” they can’t shoot. Blasters only have a range of 18” so if they want to move 12” and shoot at you they have to disembark. So you might want to use this to maneuver were they can’t shoot everything at you.  

Know when to hold them and know when to fold them: Depending on their set up, how they deploy, who goes first, the mission, and their army make-up you might want to reserve/deep strike yourself (notice all of the caveats). This gives you first shot, and it lets you react to them. A big factor though is that it also limits the time that they get to shoot you. If you start on the board they are shooting at you for 5-7 turns, if you come in on the bottom of turn 2 they only get around 3-5 turns of shooting. This can be very dangerous with a DE army because they are fast and large. If you deep strike they can blanket the table making it hard to land without a deep strike mishap, or they can block a table edge so your reserves can’t come on. This tactic is very situational and again, be very careful.   

Karios writes:

I have a quick question on your Draigo Wing build. Why do you take a 5man Strike squad and a 10man Interceptor squad instead of Purifiers?

With Draigo, you can make the Purifiers scoring, and that would be my inclination. It also seems like you could be very vulnerable to hordes (especially Orks in vehicles) without
Purifiers, even with 10 Paladins.

I appreciate your thoughts.  

The reason for the strike squad is that I have to have a second troop choice to fill out the force organization slot before I can use Grand Strategy to make other units scoring. I have seen people take solodins (a single paladin model) but I like the strikes better. It adds a warp quake, it has 5 wounds for durability, and it adds some ranged shooting. 

The Interceptors are a fast moving unit in a slow army. They make up for a lot of weaknesses that being a slow army presents. They can get to where I need them to be to do things like getting side shots, claim/contest objectives etc.

As far as Orks goes I have never lost to them, and in fact one of the easiest armies for me to beat. Orks have one move and that is to get into assault. A block of paladins can do so many wounds to them that every unit they have in assault with explode to "No Retreat" wounds (30+ attacks hitting on 3s and wounding on 2s will kill a shed load of orks). In return they will do a couple of wounds, and kill a model or 2 with a Klaw, and then it is over. 

Return of the Foot Eldar for a 1750 RTT

So as you can tell by the post below, I was thinking about taking my foot Eldar for a spin again, and that is what I did at an RTT last Saturday. A lot of people don’t know this because they only know me as a Draigowing player, but back in the day, I did well at GTs using foot Eldar. I have not played them in over a year since Da Boyz in Nov. 2010.

So I drove the 40 minutes to the game store called Crusaders Retreat in Phoenix. It was a new store with just a few tables so there were like 9 players.

My 1750 point list was:

The state of foot eldar and an e-mail question

E-mail in!

Hey, I heard from people that you are a foot eldar expert and I am just starting to play 40k but running foot eldar because it looked more fun.

I have 1500-2k points or so of the following

Eldrad + Avatar

Harlies x11 (inc. shadow seer/Jester)

Scorpions x9 (inc Exarch)

Gaurdians x40 ish

2x Warlocks

2x Wraithlords

3x War Walkers

I was going with the eml/lance on lords and SLs on the walkers and the 4 gaurdian squads with 2 spiritseer conceals.

Two things, because I notice you are in the LA area, What would you recommend I change up/get and second would you be up for a game ever?

-Michael

Well, I was a foot eldar expert, and I hope that my eldar are going to be making a return soon.

So let’s break down what you have:

4th Edition Codexes in a 5th Edition World

So the question is (all things being equal) can the 4^th edition codexes beat the heavy hitters of 5^th edition? And if they can, do they have more than one build that can do it?

Now before my recent run with the Draigowing I always played the old codexes. A lot of my friends were always busting my balls about always using 3^rd edition codexes. I took Demonhunters to Adepticon last year (and won a lot of RTTs with them for the prior 6 months), and at the last GW GT I played in was the 2009 Baltimore GT where I placed 12th (out of 130?) with my Witchhunters.

I also played a lot of games with my Chaos Space Marines (and I am taking them in a couple of weeks to the Broadside Bash) and my reputation was first made by playing foot eldar.

So what 4^th edition armies can stand up these days to Mech IG, Space Wolves and Grey Knights?

My thoughts on the matter is that most of the old codexes are still able to compete with some of the newer builds, but some of them of course are better at it than others. I think that we would see more people have success with these armies but they are just never brought. I think the reasons for this is that a lot of the armies from 4^th edition are pretty much single builds these days and it gets boring to play the same army over and over again with no room to change. The other reason why you never see some armies played is that certain armies just have a stigma to them. You hear all the time about how bad Tau are, but are they really? When was the last time you have played them or played against them? I have played against them twice with my Draigowing and I was barely able to beat them and they have given me a much harder game then most of the 5^th edition codexes have. Another reason why you never see the older armies is people like to build the latest and greatest army and they often have an easier learning curve to them. Also stores and GW always like to hype the newest releases, and forget about the older books. I went into a GW store the other day and they do not even carry any metal models, so if what you want is not out in finecast (and most of the older stuff isn’t) you are out of luck.

Here are my thoughts on the 4^th edition codexes from the worst codex to the best:

Chaos Demons out, Chaos Space Marines in to the Broadside Bash!

I was planning on taking Chaos Demons to the Broadside Bash, but it is only about 2 weeks away and I have to do a lot of painting and modeling to do to get it ready.

The fact of the matter is that I do not want to commit the resources to get that army done. I have finite time between now and Adepticon and I have to get my army ready for the big show.

I have not started on my Adepticon army yet and the clock is counting down, because we only have 79 days to go. I also am going to Los Angeles for the Broadside Bash, Las Vegas for the Ironman XVIII and San Francisco for The Bay Area Open. Add to that various local RTTs and other projects (like a possible move to Los Angeles) and I am running out of time.

One thing about me is that I always paint and get my army ready a week or two before a GT, and they are always only half done. This year I want to make sure this one is up and ready, so I need to get busy and at least start right now. The one advantage that I do have is that it is a Draigowing army and have a low model count.

So what do I have to do?

Assemble and paint Draigo

Model and paint Librarian

Model and paint 10 terminators

Model and paint 5 Strike Squad

Model and paint 10 Interceptors

Model and paint 3 dreadnaughts

Model and paint 1 rhino.

So I have to work on a total of 27 models and 4 Vehicles minimum. The problem is that they are going to require extensive painting and modeling.

Then I need to complete a display board and possible a land speeder and some other models for looks. 

A sign you have too much Warhammer part III

I have been writing a couple of posts about how much crap I have. For example I know that I have 10 horrors and I can’t find them. I straitened up my hobby room and still could not locate them. Here is another sign that I have too much stuff, I was on e-bay looking to buy some more horrors, because I have 10 painted horrors and I thought that I had 10 more, but when I looked for my painted horrors I found out that I had 29 horrors that I bought a while ago. 

So I stumbled upon this box of minis while I was looking for a demon prince. 

 

When I picked it up it weighed a ton. I found my Demon Prince, but one of his arms was missing, and this is what I found in there:

Tzeentch demons to an 1750 point RTT

Alright, so I took demons to an 1750 point RTT a couple of weeks ago at Empire Games in Mesa AZ.

Here is the army:
HQ
Fateweaver
Lord of Change w/We are Legion

Elite
3 Flamers

Troops
5 Horrors w/Bolt of Tzeentch
5 Horrors w/Bolt of Tzeentch
6 Horrors w/Bolt of Tzeentch, Icon
7 Horrors w/Bolt of Tzeentch, Changling

Fast Attack
6 Screamers

Heavy Support
Demon Prince w/Wings. Mark of Tzeentch, Bolt of Tzeentch, Demonic Gaze
Demon Prince w/Wings. Mark of Tzeentch, Bolt of Tzeentch, Demonic Gaze

So getting ready for this game I thought that I would buy some more horrors on e-bay (I have the metal ones from last edition). Then last night I was looking for my horrors, and I could not find my painted ones that I had from 10 years ago, but I did find that I had 25 horrors plus the 10 that I still could not find so I am glad that I did not buy any more because I have enough.

So round 1 Capture and Control and Dawn of War and it was against Dark Eldar. Yeah, I know…
He had a lot of venoms, Vect, a squad of Wytches, a beastmaster squad, 3 ravagers etc.
Highlight I spawned Vect! Hah!

So in the end I was getting beaten, but I had one flamer vs 5 warriors in assault near the objective on the last turn and he ended up whiffing in combat and I killed one warrior and he broke and ran and I moved to contest the objective. There were no ties and if it was a tie the winner was determined by the most VPs, and I ended up winning by 200 VPs.

Here is a pic around turn #3. His wytchs got into my Lord of Change early and I could not get un-stuck. He could not hurt me, but I could not hurt them either. After this picture was taken I assaulted the Wytches with my DP and Fateweaver. I still could not kill them. Then his beastmasters hit the combat and I did enough wounds that the beasts broke, but those wyches stayed. They were on me like herpes and I could not get rid of them!

Game #2 was a KP mission with pitched battle against a Space Marine player with an odd army. When you see an odd army you are either playing someone who is very good, or might not know what they are doing. I ended up killing everything except a tac marine squad, and he did not kill any units of mine so you can make your own decision about what kind of player he was.

Game #3 was against a Space Wolf Player in a 3 objective seize ground mission with table quarter deployment. He castled up in the corner and I dropped in front of him. I dropped down and shot up his long fangs. Then I moved forward and started to assault him. He made a mistake by not taking the table quarter with the most objectives, but one with the best cover. I know that if he was busy killing my big monsters he would be out of position to get to the objectives. Well I failed a ton of saves with my MCs and I lost them pretty early, but he was still pinned in the corner. I started to shoot his vehicles so he could not get to the far objectives in time. I kind of forgot about the objectives myself and lucky for me I still had one horror squad still in reserve on turn #4 when I remembered that I need to take some objectives.

It ended on turn #6 and I had 2 objectives and he had 1.