[Epic] SM/TL Squat armies

From: David Lado <lado_at_...>
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 11:47:41 -0400 (EDT)

>> The problem that the designers perceived was that the Squats were being =
>> used purely as a sit back and pound the daylights out of the opposition =
>> with artillery.
>
>What were typical squat forces that people used? I had one regular
>opponent in SM/TL that liked the squats. His army usually went something
>like this:
>
> 3 Overlord Companies (for a total of 9 gas bags)
> 3 Colossi
> 1 Biker Company
> 2 Gyrocopter Companies
>
>Occaisionally he'd throw in a Warlord Titan Battlegroup or a marine infantry
>company in THawks. Don't think I ever saw a squat infantryman except for
>a Grand Warlord now and again.

That's an odd army indeed. Just as a guess, it seems to me to be
specialized for killing a specific oponent (Eldar maybe?). I mean,
Overlords are great units, but they are hardly the end-all of
vehicles. I found them fairly easy to dispatch and well worthe the
effort in terms of VPs. It would be fun to face this army in the
field :).

>His SHVs and Overlords marched inexorably forward, blasting anything in sight.
>These units packed enough shots (all good shots, too) that cover offered
>little protection. (He needs 7's to hit you? That's all right. He's got
>dice in the double digits to roll.) Besides, cover didn't usually stand
>long unless it was woods.

The things only score about 3 hits on average (assuming all guns are in
range), which is good, but not awesome for a unit costing 200-250 pts.
And trying to use melta-bombs always gets the things killed.

Buildings were of no use against squats, though, for sure. Even if
their -3 sav mod barrages don't bring them down, they ignore cover
bonuses anyway. So buildings were a huge liability.

>The bikes and copters gave him more than enough mobility, incredible CAF
>and carried lots of good shots (all 360 degree). You also coult not break
>them unless you could drop off some units behind his lines to pick off the
>one or two models he needed to hide to make them unbreakable.

That, in my opinion, was one of the best kept secrets of the squat bikes
and infantry. They are completely expendable because you only need to
keep 5 stands alive to deny you opponent victory points. My orks could
easily spend 60+ shots killing 20 stands of infantry and not get a single
VP for it. That same firepower would blow away 2 colossi...

>It was scary. You almost had to take every objective marker on the board
>since you weren't really going to be able to get many points out of killing
>his units... and shifting Collossi off of objective markers was damn hard.

One of my squat opponents had a battle philosophy that he only need to hold
2 objectives (in a 4000 pt game) and he could win by destroying the enemy
army. He was right alot of the time.

>What were other typical squat forces like?

My first squat oponent (quoted above) had a more limited force selection
and so tended to field one of everything (because that's all he had).

My second squat oponent had a larger force pool and had marines to throw
into the mix. A force of equivalent size to the above (6000 pts?) might
have

colossus x2
landtrain (7 cars)
goliath company
warrior brother hood
guild bikers x2 (supported by a third set of trikes)
rhinos for all the breserkers
Overlord company (supported with an extra overlord)
cyclops

Every now and then, the iron breakers or gyro coptors would show up,
but he didn't care much for the iron breaker company (he just loved
the leviathin that didn't give up VPs) and gyrocoptors are of
limited use against orks (I liked seeing them :).

But the armies he used depended somewhat on who he faced. The
armies I saw were very much adapted to fight orks and my tactics
in particular, so I can't say they were normal. But it seems
to me 2 guildbikers, land trains, and goliaths were all fairly
standard fare for squat armies.

David
Received on Wed Jul 09 1997 - 15:47:41 UTC