Post-RockCon thoughts on the Chaos Codex

So as I said in earlier posts I am going to talk about my impressions on the Chaos Codex as it relates to my experiences playing my Iron Warriors at RockCon.


Number one, I am not to big to admit that sometimes I am wrong.  Before RockCon I had extolled the virtues of Warpflame Gargoyles.  They are a 5 point upgrade to a vehicle that gives all the weapons on the vehicle Soul Blaze.  I thought that for 5 points for the possibility of continuous damage for multiple turns seemed like a no-brainer.

After playing 4 games with them at the 'con I dropped them from my final list against the Eldar.  I had noticed as the games went on I either forgot about them, fired the tanks that had the Gargoyles at vehicles which then don't get the Blaze counter because its not infantry, or they simply didn't do any damage.  I had one game where I killed a terminator and another where I killed a Grey Knight power-armored marine, but right now i can't say they are an upgrade that I will continue to use.

One of the other reasons for not using them is that 5 points over 5 vehicles is 25 points.  Which may not sound like a lot but you could potentially use those points elsewhere.  One thing I have noticed about building lists with this codex is that you can build an army with a lot of infantry and a lot of vehicles and a lot of guns if you keep the upgrades to a minimum.  Stick with the basic chaos marine with no frills (no veterans of the long war, no marks, no icons, no additional bolter) and all of a sudden the amount of units that fit in the points size of the army increases dramatically over the previous codex.


Another thing I noticed is that the Warlord traits from the codex are actually not that interesting.  You may have noticed in my battle reports I barely mentioned the traits I had.  The Warlord trait in the codex that is the best, IMHO, is the one that lets you infiltrate d3 infantry units.  This trait of course is rolled for before the game and therefore you have only a 1 in 6 chance of rolling it.  In other words its not a reliable thing and not worth building a list around.  I think in the future rolling on the personal warlord traits from the main rulebook is something I will do.  I think the personal traits are better at least for my army.


The Burning Brand of Skalathrax is an Artefact that I will be taking in every game.  I took it once in my final game and while that's not a large sample size as far as statistical analysis is concerned, it fried a whole unit of Warp Spiders.  That unit can be incredibly abnoxious if not dealt with and the Brand did one shot and smoked em all.  It can be a very potent weapon in the army.


The amount of firepower that you can put out with this codex is much larger than the previous one.  When I build my lists I try to have one heavy weapon per 100 points.  This codex easily allows you to do that.  In every game I felt I had as much firepower as I needed.  I was able to wreck Landraiders in 2 games by simply firing lascannons and missile launchers at them.  While melta guns are still king at killing vehicles, long range firepower in the form of lascannons specifically, should not be discounted because now you can glance a vehicle to death.


Helbrutes are indeed much better than their Dreadnought predecessors from the previous codex.  The fact that they no longer have the possibility of going crazy every turn is huge.  If kitted out with long range fire like a missile launcher and a twin-linked lascannon, you will rarely be shot at because you will be out of range of most of the enemy guns.  If you stay out of range, you don't get shot and don't lose a hull point and don't go crazy.  And if you do go crazy you never attack your own units.  In fact, if you roll a 2 on the d3 chart when it does go crazy the only difference between it being normal and 'crazy' is that it has rage, which doesn't mean you have to move towards the nearest enemy it only means you get 2 attacks on the charge IF you charge.  If you have a long-range Helbrute then you can move and shoot normally.


Veterns of the Long War (VothLW), Champions of Chaos, and Challenges are three rules that can dictate how you play 6th edition with the chaos codex.  By not taking VothLW my champion's leadership is 9 and I don't have Hatred (Space Marines).  This is a good thing for a shooty 10 man squad.  By combining the requirement that my champions always issue and accept challenges with the Champion of Chaos rule and having a lower leadership, against any dedicated assault squad my basic marine squad will not only lose combat but also then be at a lower leadership.  This is seemingly a bad thing in that I won't win a whole lot of combats with those squads.  It is; however, a good thing.

The challenge will probably kill my champion (the guy with just a meltabomb), the squad will get beat and I will have to test, with modifiers, against a lower leadership of 8 or the assaulting squad will simply wipe out my squad.  If I break and run away and don't get swept, then that leaves the enemy assault squad high and dry out in the open the next turn.  With 6th ed, my squads will almost always have a reasonable chance to regroup and the rest of my army will then be able to fire on the threat and eliminate it.  Obviously this is a better result than what would happen with the old codex, where my guys would stay locked in combat much longer than they should and I wouldn't be able to then use my armies greatest strength, shooting, to kill the assaulting unit.

By upgrading to VothLW, you better equip that unit for hth or you will be locked in combat at the wrong times.  This army which I am playing as a shooting list does not want to be in combat at all unless absolutely necessary.  If my game has no or few combats in it, I generally win.


Lines of Fire in some of the games was poor at best.  This may not be a symptom of 6th edition because I have always preferred more terrain over less, but I have also listened to many podcasts and blogs on the subject and seen tournament reports about this.  It seems more terrain is the norm now in 6th edition.  In one game in particular I couldn't get good lanes of fire on a rhino (the Death Guard game).  The rhino was able to move too close to my lines and I couldn't stop it.  This is why I believe a unit like bikes or raptors or flyers or indirect fire is essential now to be able to get around that terrain you can't see through.


With the above points in mind, I built a list to use as a base for all of my lists in the future, or at least a baseline list that could stimulate ideas for other lists.

I was going for 1500 points, but when I finished it I was at only 1371.

HQ -
Warpsmith with Burning Brand of Skalathrax.
140 points

Elites -
5 chosen with 2 flamers
in rhino with havoc launcher
147 points

Helbrute with twin-linked lascannon and missile launcher
135 points

Troops -
9 marines autocannon and plasma gun
1 champion with meltabombs
in rhino with havoc launcher
217 points

9 marines autocannon and plasma gun
1 champion with meltabombs
in rhino with havoc launcher
217 points

9 marines missile launcher and flamer
1 champion with meltabombs
165 points

Fast attack -
4 Raptors with 2 meltaguns
1 champion with meltabombs
120 points

Heavy Suport -
Predator with autocannon and 2 lascannon sponsons
115

Predator with autocannon and 2 lascannon sponsons
115

The above list addresses all of the issues I brought up above.

The Burning Brand of Skalathrax in the Warpsmith gives him and his unit (the chosen) 4 flamer templates.  The Warpsmith can deal with vehicles with his meltagun shot and his Master of Mechanisms rule.  He also boosts the shooting of my army by being able to downgrade a cover save of a piece of terrain.

This army has none of the upgrade that can be taken except for the havoc launchers, which add quite a bit, honestly.  An extra template at 48" range at strength 5 is quite useful.

There are 14 heavy weapons (including the Havoc missile launchers) in a list that is under 1400 points which hits my goal of one heavy weapons per 100 points.  All of the heavy weapons, it should be noted, are 48" range.  This allows the army to stay out of range against a vast number of foes.  This puts it in line with the fire power from the vanilla marine codex and also in line with the 3.5 edition chaos codex.

I also have 6 vehicles and 41 infantry in this list, which is pretty decent for only 1371 points.  It gives a lot of targets to the enemy and a lot of units that can work together and combine their fire to take out enemy units.  The vehicles allow the army to be very mobile if need be.  Any of the vehicles except the Helbrute can move 18" in a turn in case last minute objective grabbing is needed or if a flank is compromised.

The raptors in particular add something desperately needed in the ability to ignore terrain and get to that pesky rhino that is hiding behind a hill of ruin.  The raptors also have fear and can do some damage in assault if need be.  They only move forward if there is a spot that they will need to be to counter a hidden transport, otherwise they stay back and are used as counter-attack.

Issues Remaining:

One of the issues with the above list is still the issue of moving up to grab objective outside of the deployment zone.  This issue is again mitigated somewhat by how fast many of the units can move.  Also the point is to blow away the scoring units of the enemy with firepower so they can't score the objectives in their half of the board.

Another issue is flyers.  Right now the above list can either ignore them or try to shoot them down by firing everything at them.  Neither option is very good.

But with the above being only 1371 points there are plenty of points left over to address these issues.


I hope this post was useful and I wanted to bring you all into my line of thinking with how I build and play the Iron Warriors in 6th edition with the new codex.

I will be expanding on this post in the future with lists that build off of the 'core' list I presented above.

RockCon Report Part 6 - Game 5 Battle Report: Iron Warriors Vs. Eldar

This was the 5th and final game of my RockCon weekend and it was a fitting end.  I was playing against a good friend of mine and someone who I have had good games against before.  We decided to go a bit bigger with this game doing 3,000 points and 2 force orgs.  I also took Guard Allies.

I decided to go more foot heavy and I took off the Warpflame Gargoyles because I thought they had been a bit lackluster in previous games.

Here is a picture of the army I fielded.  Unfortunately it is a bit blurry.  I think I may need to invest in a new digital camera.

I also took a bigger, beefier HQ choice.  I took the overall commander of my Iron Warriors, Lord Boroth.
It was a study in contrasts, with Boroth being 227 points. And the second Lord being only 115 points.

As his weaker sidekick I gave him a lesser lord to command the second detachment of Iron Warriors in this game.  A model I made a long time ago and never came up with a name for.

I also took the opportunity to take some closer pictures of my army for this game:

Here is my army list:

HQ -
Lord Boroth - terminator armor, sigil of corruption, chainfist, burning brand of skalathrax, mark of tzeentch, gift of mutation, combat familiar.

Chaos Lord - murder sword, aura of dark glory.

Company Command squad with lascannon

Elites -
Helbrute - twin-linked lascannon and missile launcher

Helbrute - missile launcher

Troops -
9 marines autocannon and plasma gun
1 champion with melta bombs


9 marines autocannon and plasma gun
1 champion with melta bombs


9 marines missile launcher and flamer
1 champion with melta bombs
in rhino with havoc launcher


9 marines missile launcher and flamer
1 champion with melta bombs
in rhino with havoc launcher


9 marines missile launcher and melta gun
1 champion with powerfist


9 marines missile launcher and melta gun
1 champion with powerfist

Imperial Guard veterans - lascannon and meltagun

Heavy Support -
Predator - autocannon and 2 lascannons

Predator - autocannon and 2 lascannons

Predator - twin-linked lascannon and 2 heavy bolters

9 Havocs with 4 autocannons
1 champion

9 Havocs with 4 lascannons
1 champion

3 Obliterators

Leman Russ Squadron - One with Battlecannon and heavy bolter sponsons, one with Exterminator Autocannon and 2 heavy bolter sponsons

I had 100 infantry models in this game and 39 heavy weapons.  I thought that sounded good on paper.

His list was approximately:

HQ -
Eldrad

Autarch

Elites -
Fire Dragons

Warp Spiders

Troops -
about 15 Guardians with bright lance


about 15 Guardians with bright lance

10 dire avengers in Wave serpent

10 dire avengers in Wave serpent

10 dire avengers in Wave serpent

Eldar Rangers

Eldar Rangers

Heavy Support - 

Falcon Grav Tank

Fire Prism

Fire Prism

WraithLord

WraithLord

We decided to roll randomly for the mission again.  We ended up with the Big Guns Never Tire and the Vanguard Strike Deployment.

Here are some pictures of our deployment.

We rolled 3 objectives and I set one in the barn and deployed a squad of marines on it.  This objective turned out to be Skyfire Nexus, which in this game with no flyers meant there would be benefit for me holding it.

He placed one in his deployment zone and placed a squad of Guardians on it.  This one was Scatterfield which would give his guardians a +1 cover save.  With a warlock in the squad and Eldrad casting powers, this squad would nigh invulnerable in the game.  They had a 4+ rerollable cover save from start to finish in this game.

We placed one in the middle as well as you can see with this overall shot of the battlefield.

Here is his final deployment.

He won first turn and began moving up the field to get his guns into range.

The Eldar begin firing on turn one and eliminate every tank of mine within their range.

Starting with a Rhino.

Then they blow up a Predator.

Before the game Boroth had deployed together with the Obliterators in the center of my deployment.  I thought It'd be a good idea.  The Fire Prisms spotted this squad and opened up on it.  When the dust settled and after a lot of successful look out sir and invulnerable save rolls, all three Obliterators were gone and Boroth was standing there alone.

My turn One I began moving.  I slowly began advancing some of my marine squads into midfield, knowing eventually I would need to take the central objective to win, since he already got first blood.  Lord Boroth joins a different marine squad but wisely stays in the rear of the squad so he won't have to make a billion look out sir rolls like he did in the previous Eldar shooting phase.

I start shooting and blew up a Falcon, forcing the Fire Dragons to disembark.  The Wave Serpent next to it I blast off a hull point and immobilize it.  The Wraithlords are also a focus of the Iron Warriors heavy weapons, slowly stripping off wounds.

The Eldar start shifting around and continue firing, killing a few marines here and there and stripping off hull points from a few of my vehicles.  His Fire Dragons move behind the back building.

The next turn, my Infantry continues to move forward into the guns of the Eldar.  To make sure they don't get tarpitted by a Wraithlord, I focus all of my fire onto them and kill them both.

My lascannon Havocs open up and strip off a hull point and immobilize the flanking Wave Serpent, forcing my opponent to disembark his Dire Avengers so they are ready to open up on my lines.

At this point the Warp Spiders drop in with the Autarch attached to them.  They open up on the squad of marines with Boroth in them.  His Wave Serpent on my left flank then also disembarks a squad of Dire Avengers.

The Warp Spiders open up along with the Dire Avengers on the squad of marines with Boroth in them.  The other squad of marines on the other side of the bunker also get thinned downed by fire from the Eldar.  The Warp Spiders then jump back behind the bunker, thinking they are safe from my fire.

The next turn Boroth and his squad moves up and he unleashes hell of the Warp Spiders with his Burning Brand and kills em all.  

I also continue firing, blowing up two Wave Serpents and a whole squad of Dire Avengers.

In response his Autarch moves up to charge Boroth in his turn.  The objective is revealed as well, showing that it will now possibly explode every turn.

He continues to fire on my left flank and blows up another Predator and Helbrute.  He moves in close to my rhino with a Wave Serpent as well.

He then blasts away a squad down to its Champion who then falls back.

The Fire Dragons move up and fire away at Boroth's Squad to try and whittle them down before the Autarch's charge.  

The Autarch charges, challenging Boroth to a duel.  Boroth smiles inside his helmet and accepts.  With blades whirling, the Autarch attacks.  Boroth shrugs off most of his attacks, taking one wound but dealing out several.  His chainfist slices through the Autarch and ends the fight.  With the Autarch's remains glistening on Boroth's chainfist and combat blades, he screams into the air the gods of chaos smiling down on him, and Boroth's boon is nothing of note.

While the Chaos Marines had continued moving up, the Eldar begin moving to counter.

The Eldar move up and exact retribution on Boroth, his remaining marine bodyguard, and several other squads of Iron Warriors.

The next turn, Several squads of Marines move forward and re capture the central objective.  The game ends.

The Eldar Guardian squad ends the game holding their objective that they had since turn one.

The two marine squads in the middle hold the central objective.

And the marine squad in the barn at the back holds theirs as well.

At the End of the game, the Iron Warriors hold 2 objectives for 6 points plus 4 heavy supports destroyed for a total of 10 points.  The Eldar hold one objective and got first blood and slay the warlord and three heavy support destroyed for a total of 8 points.

The Iron Warriors win a close one.  

I didn't miss the Warpflame Gargoyles and the weaker lord I took did nothing.  Boroth proved to be a resilient beast, which I was hoping for.  He only died because a bunch of Fire Dragons shot the piss out of him.

Overall a cool game.  I think I overwhelmed him with the amount of infantry in my list.  This potentially shows the theory that infantry is good, but I am not sold that only infantry is good.  Tanks, in particular long-range fire battle tanks are still darn good.  And rhinos are ok, but not horrible.

Well, that wraps up my battle reports for RockCon, my next post will be my thoughts on the codex and how these games have helped inform me on what I think will work in my army and what things I want to do with it in the future.

RockCon Report Part 5 - Game 4 Battle Report: Iron Warriors Vs. Blood Angels

This battle was pretty fun and I don't get to play against the Blood Angels very often, so this was definitely a game I was looking forward to.

We played 2,000 points and I took the same army list I had used in the previous game.  If you want to see my army list just look at my previous post here.

His list was approximately:

HQ -
Captain in Terminator Armour with thunder hammer and storm shield

Elites -
5 Honor Guard in Razorback

Dreadnought

Sanguinary priest

Troops -
10 assault marines with jump packs

10 assault marines with jump packs

10 tactical marines in a rhino

Fast -
Baal Predator

Storm Raven

Heavy -
Vindicator

We rolled up the mission randomly from the book and we got Purge the Alien with Vanguard strike deployment.

I was hoping for something different because I had already played Purge the Alien which is basically kill points with the 3 secondary objectives already this weekend and wanted to do something different.  I do love the Vanguard Strike deployment, however.

He got first turn.  But the Iron Warriors struck first.  A predator swung around and popped his Razorback, giving me first blood.

I then fired the other predator at his large terminator squad and killed one of them setting them on fire from the warpflame gargoyles.

I then also blew up a rhino he had in the backfield.

He then began moving his Vindicator over to flank my army and popped off a shot into the ruins killing several indentured Imperial Guard.

He continued his advance both up the middle and around the flank.  His Baal Predator continued moving and firing taking out a few marines in the ruins.

The basilisks then began to throw their weight around and blew a huge chunk out of his centrally advancing forces.

The large terminator squad on my right flank was being continually hammered by my Helbrute and both of my predators as well as some man-portable heavy weapons from the guard.  I forced a leadership test based on casualties and they decided it was time to retreat.  They fell back only to regroup the next turn as space marines are wont to do.

All of a sudden his Storm Raven comes flying onto the board guns blazing right into the center of my lines.  He fired and blew up one of my rhinos.  My marine squad loses a few models but is not pinned.

His assault squad with jump packs then fly into the ruins and assaults my marines squad after he had vaporized the guard squad in front of them with a well-placed vindicator round.

I then begin to move around my units to start reacting to this central push.

The next turn his other 10 man assault squad and dreadnought disembarks from the Storm Raven ready to wreak havoc on my central lines.

The assault squad in the ruins finishes off my chaos marine squad and his Baal Predator, Vindicator and 5 man Honor Guard squad continue their push towards my lines.  I lobbed a basi shell into the ruins to wipe out his remaining assault squad who killed my marine squad.

The honor guard emerge from the central ruins and assaults my guard command squad, wiping them out.

The assault squad that emerged from the Storm Raven also assaults my guard squad.

After killing the Guard command squad the honor guard moves into the ruined building.

The assault squad rips apart my guard squad with their lightning clawed leader heading the charge.

At this point my whole army turns to begin the counter punch.  Morgoth's rhino moves through the ruins.  His squad disembarks along with the other marine squad who were in their rhino.  Both of those squad along with the marine squad in the rubble of their rhino open fire on the assault squad blasting them to little bits.

The Predators and Dreadnought fire on the Blood Angels Dreadnought blowing off an arm.

The marines in the ruins fire on the honor guard.  At the end of that turns shooting phase, the honor guard had been wiped from the board.

The Blood Angels shoot back blowing up one of my rhinos and killing the squad within.

At this point its end of turn 5 and a die was rolled.  The game ended.  The Blood Angels ended up on top.

He had 7 kill points to my 4 plus one for First Blood.  It was a good game and could have swung back in my favour potentially if it had gone to 6 or 7 turns.

The Warpflame Gargoyles did help a bit.  They set the Terminators on fire and kept them on fire for most of the game.  It did kill one or two terminators, so that's something.

I think the Basilisks did a great job the second game in a row.  Indirect fire strength 9 ap 3 big blasts are fantastic.  Not that they weren't before, but it has been a long time since I played with them.  I am happy that 6th ed has allowed me to play with them with my Iron Warriors again.

The next game was my 5th and final game of the weekend and it featured my Iron Warriors versus Eldar.

Coming soon.