So I played my first game with the new chaos codex last night.
I took pictures and will be doing a battle report hopefully this evening if I have the time.
I want to take a minute to discuss the 'meta' in 6th edition. I don't like the idea that there exists a meta game in 40k. I think that people who go to tournaments follow what other people are bringing to tournaments and also like to jump on the band wagon of the new codex. I don't do this and my gaming group generally doesn't do this either. I think this way of playing 40k isn't wrong per se, but it limits how people think of the game and how they think it should be played.
The rules in 6th edition changed what works and what doesn't. I think assault and light vehicles got slightly worse. Because of this people have been moving back to infantry armies with few or no vehicles. I believe this is short sighted and foolish if you truly want to win games. I am not by any means a tournament player and am not someone who cares about my win/loss ratio but I like to take an army to a game that has a chance to win against whatever I may face.
Taking this into consideration going pure infantry is a mistake because when done on a large scale because people think that this is the new 'meta' then allows for the rock/paper/scissors idea to actually come true. What I am saying is people will make things comes to pass if they believe in it enough.
By taking a list that combines vehicles, transports, infantry, anti-tank, and anti-infantry weapons you can play a balanced list and actually have a better chance against infantry heavy armies even in 6th.
The game I played last night was quite fun. I played a lot of vehicles but also had a lot of infantry. I had a lot of long range heavy firepower: 4 twin-linked lascannons, 4 regular lascannons, 4 autocannons, 2 missile launchers, 3 havoc missile launchers, and a twinlinked heavy bolter and 2 other heavy bolters.
The new chaos codex allows lots of tanks and lots of infantry.
I had a landraider, 3 predators, 2 dreadnoughts, and 3 rhinos. I also had 65 infantry models. All of this in 2000 points.
I took warpflame gargoyles on the predators and the landraider and I think they worked ok. The key to them is actually causing an unsaved wound on an enemy model. Thats one reason I think putting them of a Predator with a twin-linked lascannon and 2 heavy bolters is a good idea, because you probably kill a guy with the lascannon and then put a soul blaze counter on the squad.
Dreadnoughts are great now. They only go crazy if a hull point is taken off. When they go crazy there is also no downside to what happens. Basically when playing against a chaos dred, you want to kill it otherwise it will mess you up the next turn. If you ignore it it will simply keep firing away and slowly moving towards you until it kills you.
A large squad of cultists lead by a chaos lord to make them fearless is a nice thing. I was able to move my 20 man cultist squad with my chaos lord all the way across the table because they were fearless they all had to die because they aren't going to break.
I will have more thoughts on the game in my next post which will be the battle report.
I'd like to do an interview with you on my blog, about the meta, and how specifically our "group" plays.
ReplyDeleteI think it is funny that I was playing mostly-infantry lists in previous editions, and now the "meta" has swung my way. I could care less! :)
I like the number of heavy weapons you packed in that list. Gads, I can't wait to take a crack at it.