Friday, April 15, 2011

Comparative thoughts on making Sanguinary Guard more competitive

As I was perusing blogs today, I came across an article from Sandwyrm about how to make Sanguinary Guard a more viable list, namely against MSU armies.  That immediately pricked my attention.  Sandwyrm's batle reports and tactical analyses have served as a source of inspiration in building my own Sanguinary Guard list.  You can see his article here: Making Sanguinary Guard more Competitive.

Sandwyrm advocates using landspeeders.  He also states some very good reasons for using, chiefly duality and blocking.  These are two things that make landspeeders very attractive.  They can take out armor and infantry. 

But I hate speeders!  They have never worked for me and I think that they are way too fragile. Recently, I have been intrigued by typhoons, but I tend to like units with at least a little resilience.  Speeders just don't tend to have that.  They tend to serve as easy kill points or just as distractions that get swept aside easily. 

I contend that if you want ranged attack that can serve a dual purpose, you can't go wrong with missile launchers.  Thus, I advocate devestators.  For 130pt., you can have 4 missile launchers.  That gives you range, high strength shots (S8) and duality (krak- S8, frag- S4 template).  Plus, the missile launchers come on a platform that isn't stun/shakeable and they take better advantage of cover saves.  Throw in the ability to babysit multiple units with a sanguinary priest and you have a very durable unit. 

That said, Sandwyrm places a lot of value on blocking using his speeders.  I totally agree that this is a huge ability.  Tanks wishing to ram a speeder risk it passing it's dodge save and being stuck in front of it, wasting their ability to shoot.  Tanks can tank shock infantry out of the way.  This can be a wonderful way to prevent tanks/transports from moving forward to advance on your army.  However, I wonder if this is needed with the unprecedented mobility available via a DoA jumper list.  With a 12" move and deepstrike capabilities it seems that jumper lists should be able to mitigate enemy units crossing the table on a wide frontage using these abilities to refuse a flank or rapidly redeploy to keep units at arms length. 

So, who is right?  Well no one really.  I think these arguments really just come from preferences and playstyles.  It could be that a balance could be struck where a unit or two of each, devestators and speeders could be taken to combine the strengths of each while simultaneously mitigating weaknesses as well.  For now, I will try out my devestator missile spam and see how it works.  One thing can be said in Sandwyrm's defense, though.  He has far more experience than I do and seems to be more tactically sound.  If I were to place my army design versus his, I think we would have similar strengths and weaknesses, but I would simply be outplayed.  As per my usual tenant, barring wonky dice, the more experienced player will always come out on top.  Familiarity with rules, army design, and tactics usually wins the day. 

2 comments:

TheGraveMind said...

Devs are great for their points, but when I was using them, deployments like Dawn of war hurt them so bad it was stupid. I spent two turns walking on and trying to get into a good position. So I switched to typhoons.

Dave said...

That is a good point. Typhoons do have the benefit of being able to move on and then shoot, but due to dawn of war, they are unlikely to see anything to shoot at because of nightfighting. I think you are in the same boat regardless. Most heavy weapons don't do well with that deployment scenario.

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