RE: [Epic] My DexCon Epic 40k experiences...

From: Miller, Chris <CMiller_at_...>
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 09:32:29 -0500

>
>First off, I read the background and such and assumed that in most
>cases Space Marines wouldn't just be fighting alone. I also looked at
>my troops and decided that I really didn't have enough plain marines to
>field a competitive 2,000 point force without stooping to using lots of
>Land Raiders and Whirlwinds to up the points.

----> Ahhh...remember those days when you're mini's didn't include every
model you'd want to field...
>
>It was announced as a tournament, so I assumed that I would be seeing
>everyone's toughest army. Nevertheless, I couldn't bring myself to
>take more than 6 land raiders, so when I wanted another detachment I
>used Leman Russes + Hellhounds instead. I thought about taking
>Thunderhawks, but since I wasn't transporting any troops, I preferred
>basic fighters and fighter-bombers. Since these are actually easier to
>shoot down than a Thunderhawk, I considered this to be less cheesy (I
>hate that word because it's so subjective). Finally, when I thought
>about what I would be facing, I expected that one or two losers would
>try to field a 900 point Imperator since it was a 2,000 point battle.
>I really didn't have a chance of countering that without taking a
>titan. I would've taken a Reaver if I had one, but I only have a
>Warlord.
-----> Nothing wrong with taking a titan - they've been in the game
longer
than any other unit, so I think people ought to use them. An Impy in
a 2000 pt army is a little much, though - it would be a gambler's
army...
>
>So the titan is the only part of my army that I feel really helped me
>be more competitive. In a purely Space Marine force, the Leman Russes
>would have become more Land Raiders (since I have no Predator models
>yet) and no one would have been happy to see six more of those. The
>air power would have become three Thunderhawks which definitely would
>have been more effective in getting through and attacking his ground
>troops.
-----> a pure space marine army is actually kind of limited. Sure, you
get
the fast-attack portion down, and you have some tanks, but the artillery
is very limited, and you have no war engines at all...
If you have fun with it, good, but many will want a little more variety.
>
>My opponent also had a mix of troops, including a Titan-class vehicle
>(Leviathan) and plenty of Ultramarines. He also had artillery which I
>did not. I feel we were pretty evenly matched in terms of army power,
>but that my choice of where to drop the assault marines and how to use
>them is what really unhinged his flank and made it easy for me to push
>up my tanks and titan to firefight and drive the rest of his center
>off.
----> Ain't that the hallmark of a marine force - YOU get to decide
where
the main fight takes place. In 2nd, I was always dumping out assault
marines or termies on top of artillery units or objectives. If you play
marines,
you really need to get some T-hawks if you do not already have them...
>
>Perhaps I'm missing your point, but I don't have a hard and fast rule
>about army construction. I've played a lot of games with a pure space
>marine force. If I had Imperial Guard I would certainly play some
>games with just them. But it doesn't quite make sense to me to be
>absolutely against mixing them given that it is supposed to happen all
>the time in the universe. I may not have played enough games to really
>see whether or not it is too powerful to do so.
----> The Imperial guard is like a WWII Russian Army - tons of cheap
infantry,
some decent tanks, big artillery. The infantry isn't expected to do well
on it's
own - it's mainly there to fill in the gaps between the tanks and
artillery.
Adding in some specialist infantry isn't cheese (to me), and adding in a
titan (or 3) isn't either - think along the lines of naval gunfire
support,
except now the battleship can roll right up and stomp on the bad guys...
        If you want to get picky, I think an IG-only army is more balanced
than a Marine-only army, and probably more fun to play. Their troops
suck?
Remember, quantity has a quality all it's own...
>
>I have a roster for my chapter and I field marines in plausible units
>based on what I have available in my companies. I also plan to fully
>flesh out the 100th Cadian Tank Regiment, from which Team Yankee came.
>Unfortunately, right now I only have the six Leman Russes and the three
>Hellhounds. Anyway, enough about this - hope it answers your question.
>
>Regards,
>
>- Erik
>
>"Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble
>up, if you will ever dig."
>- Marcus Aurelius
----> You can mix units with several reasonings...maybe the marines were
just dropped in to defend an IG firebase under attack...maybe a company
of marines has been thrown into the lines here to stffen a faltering IG
defense...if marines are available, they're going to want to lead any
offensives,
right? So Company X of the Ultras leads the IG charge to overrun this
enemy
position...Titan are the heavy hitters so maybe 3 Warlords are assigned
to
bust out, with the IG following up to hold the territory...another fun
scenario:
marines have flown/dropped into an objective behind enemy lines and now
the IG / Titan force is attempting to relieve them.
<Whew>
It ain't "cheesy" if you have a reason. There's usually one big
commander
(or small group of commanders) calling the shots, and they are going to
assign the best available units for the mission. Notice I said best
available,
not just best.(If we had terminator armor for every marine... )
What is cheesy is something I mentioned once before: the imperial
all-star
team where the IG arty company and the long fangs provide covering
fire for the death company while the ravenwing scouts out new targets
so the blood claws can deploy from their thunderhawks...

Chris Miller

>
Received on Tue Jul 08 1997 - 14:32:29 UTC

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Tue Oct 22 2019 - 13:09:37 UTC