Saturday, December 17, 2011

Tweaking the Beatstick

Beatstick courtesy of Bell of Lost Souls
A week or two ago I decided to take a look at a fun BA list that provided quite a few combat threats that were reasonably hard to neutralize for an opponent.  It also included a unit of asssault terminators because of my deep-seeded love for the models.  I dubbed it the Blood Angel Beatstick.  After that, I took it out for a spin against a friend's Grey Knight army for a Black Friday Beatdown. The results were a completely lopsided victory on the part of the Beatstick.  Of course, it's my belief that this occurred due to my opponent's list being severely unoptimized and because of him forgetting to use defensive grenades with his large purifier + character deathstar in the one assault that mattered.  Ultimately, I was able to wipe his whole army save a single strike squad sitting on top of a building. The image was perfection!  My entire army was rapidly moving towards his single strike squad and the game ended with my friend's concession when the building was completely surrounded with his strike squad pouring psycannon and psybolt ammo down from above to little effect due to FNP and 3+ or 2+ saves. 

So, all of the backstory aside, I have been thinking.  Though it was a completely one sided game, one thing I noticed is that my terminator mini-star didn't have as much oomph against WS4 as I wished it would.  With 12 lightning claw and 6 thunder hammer attacks on the charge, I still only land half of those statistically and in real life, my dice hate me, so though the unit is scary as all get out, it really is more of a pushover against other elite infantry which it is supposed to take out. 

My thought would be to add in a chaplain to the unit, either power armored or terminator armored, but I am having a bit of trouble finding the points.  Here is the army in its original iteration:

Mephiston- 250pt.

5 Assault Terminators- 3x lightning claws, 2x thunder hammer, riding in a Crusader with pintle melta- 470pt.
3x Sanguinary Priests- 2 naked, 1 with a jump pack- 175pt.

10 Assault Marines- 2x meltaguns, powerfist- 235pt.
10 Assault Marines- 2x meltaguns, powerfist- 235pt.
10 Assault Marines- 2x meltaguns, powerfist- 235pt.

Landspeeder Tornado- multi-melta, heavy flamer- 70pt.
Landspeeder Tornado- multi-melta, heavy flamer- 70pt.

5 Devestators- 4x missiles- 130pt.
5 Devestators- 4x missiles- 130pt.

2,000pt on the nose

The army, as it stands now, has a good deal of nice threats.  The only place I could think about removing points for a chaplain would be to remove the landspeeders, but they provide a good deepstrike/fast threat in my opponents' backfield.  Granted, I was very lucky with them in my previous game, but they usually die quickly due to AV10, so I am not necessarily fussed about it, but I think I might miss the melta threat they provide.

That said, I don't want to mess with anything else.  Everything else really makes the army.  In my previous game, the terminators went with a priest in the LRC and it was used as mobile terrain to shelter Mephiston and a single assault squad forward so that they could lay down the smack when I got close enough.  This left me two more squads to come via deepstrike and provide a bit more pressure. 

What would you suggest?  If I dropped the speeders, I would have 140pt. to spend on either an elite or HQ chappy.  Both have merit. The Reclusiarch has better number of attacks and wounds and can take a hand flamer with the additional points (130+10) to be an annoyance.  The elite chappy is cheap enough to to take terminator armor and meltabombs which would make him more survivable in regards to armor save.  Either is good. 

So, please comment and tell me what you might suggest.  The overall goal is to allow the terminators to overcome their "shyness" when facing WS4 and I think a chaplain would be the best fit for the job.  I await your thoughts.

Some Battle Reports:
Space Wolf Razorspam vs. Horde Orks- a Vassal Report
Sanguinary v. Grey Knights
Vulkan Ain't No Joke
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3 comments:

DarthDiggler said...

I agree the speeders would be tough to take out of the list. They can be quite effective in the middle of the enemy army when you also have 30 assault marines, 5 terminators and Mephiston in the mix. It would be easier to remove them if you had a more stand and shoot army.

That being said your goal is to increase the killing power of the terminators. They are in a LRC so you could put 2 more terminators in there, one hammer and one claw, to increase their killing power by increasing their numbers. This will only cost you 85pts.

You talked aout adding a chaplain to get the refills to hit on the charge, but another idea might be to add in a librarian with Rage instead. Rage has a chance to get blocked by a hood or Rune Priest, however it also works in every assault phase as opposed to only when you charge as with the Chaplain. A librarian in terminator armor with a storm shield is 145pts and you can give him Unleash Rage and anything else. This will give you a refill to hit in all assault phase for the terminators in close combat.

Two speeders are 140pts and the last 5 can come from changing a power fist sarge into a power weapon + meltabomb sarge. This is the sarge of the squad which jumps up behind the LRC. The PW sarge can use the benefit of the priest more readily then the powerfist sarge and the combo saves you 5 pts.

Dave said...

I really like the options you mentioned. All of them seems like good options. The cheapest option is the additional models added to the unit. I can take 7 and still have room for the sanguinary priest as well. This would give me 16 S5 I5 attacks on the charge and 9 S9 I1 attacks. This would effectively yield more hits. It would also only cost me a single speeder instead of both.

The terminator libby is also an interesting idea. Using unleash rage can be hit or miss, but a viable option as well. You've given me some thing to think about for sure. If anyone else has ideas, please feel free to share.

Dave said...
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