" Greetings Kirbs,
First off, kudos to you and all those that make 3++ so awesome.
This is my first mail to 3++, hope you like it and it generates fruitful discussion with the rest of the good people in the blog.
My name is John and i am from Athens, Greece, i registered a couple of days ago as Ianos
I got to review a bit of the new DE (finally after all those long years!) and tried to create a 5th ed 1750 points list the best way I can imagine right now. Keep in mind I haven’t had a chance to review the entire codex or infinite time to think about it, so I might really be missing something.
So on to the hot stuff. I‘ll start of with Elites, as they seem an auto-choice, that is trueborns with 4 blasters in cannon upgraded venoms. I was also thinking giving them 2 lances and sit them back but that’s just like warriors in the previous codex only with less bodies and ld9. So why not just saturate with venoms and pack as much heat as possible? So 3x4 trueborn with 4 blasters and 3 venoms with cannon, that’s 639.
For heavy support I opted for the most cost-efficient lance package which is the ravager. 9 lances over 3 vehicles is still a good bargain. Fighter and bomber just cost more for less AT punch and same durability. So, 315 for the ravagers.
This leaves us almost 800 to play with. Going through fast attack I noticed that the only real tank killers are the scourges. Bikes pack too little and all others are cc units. Scourges are also highly capable in damaging infantry and MCs; they are essentially avengers on steroids! So 5 scourges with 2 blasters are 140, 3 such squads are 420.
Troops are minimal; I started with 2 5 man kabalites with blaster in venoms with cannons. This gives us 5 venoms, hence 60 poison shots with the numbers getting ridiculous when scourges and warriors close in. I then added 5 wracks to camp and hold objectives. In kps I can use them in a razor and have one warrior squad on foot threaten at 24”. All these are another 300
Finally my HQ is simply a haemo, not sure if and what kind of equipment he should get.
The above army is at 1724 and can easily throw 87 poison shots turn one. It’s got 9 lances and 20 new and improved blasters.
So what are you waiting for? tear it down!"
Trueborns in Venoms with multiple blasters are great but not an auto-shoo in, very much depends on the army. That being said, Trueborn and Ravagers are a good start to the army but you've got minimal Troop scoring ability and you haven't really taken advantage of power of the Pain (which is fine for some armies) but you're taking a Haemon as your HQ. So I really think we need to look at HQ, Troops and FA. For 3x 5x Trueborn w/4x Blasters + Venom w/double cannon and 3x Ravagers we're using 870 points. This gives us a lot of poison and anti-tank but in fragile cases so let's add some Warriors in Raiders rather than Venoms. With a splinter cannon and blaster you get a nicely versatile unit which can put out some impressive anti-infantry firepower and the blaster + lance on the Raider is very potent. With splinter racks these units are 185 a piece so let's take three leaving only 325 points.
Now we've got two options here for Fast Attack, Reavers and Scourges. Both can take what we really want here (heat lances) but we need to take 6 bikes compared to 5 Scourges. Scourges can also take 2x splinter cannons for more poison but we've got 30 warriors with splinter racks + the Venoms so don't need it too much. 2x 5x Scourges w/2x heat lances is 268 points or we could also take Blasters (274) or Dark Lances (274) though the lances become quite static. What the heat lances give us some deepstriking ability which is much appreciated. This leaves a measly 57 points to play with which basically leaves us with taking a cheapy HQ. We'll grab a Haem with Liquifier and drop a Trueborn from one squad leaving us at 1741 points.
The Haemon is basically a cheap HQ and the pain token is a bonus but the template is very nice. Dropping a couple of blasters from the Trueborn squads (maybe to 3 each) opens up points for flickerfields on the Raiders who can screen the Ravagers and perhaps add in some other upgrades like Sails/Shock Prow but the core is there. So this is what we have.
Haemon w/Liquifier
2x5x Trueborn w/4x Blasters, Venom w/2x splinter cannon
1x4x Trueborn w/4x Blasters, Venom w/2x splinter cannon
3x10x Warriors w/blaster, splinter cannon, Raider w/splinter racks
2x5x Scourges w/2x heat lances
3x Ravagers
Totals: 1741 points
9 tanks
55 infantry
