Email in: 1500 BA: Blood Vindication

"Hello Kirby,

Like many a Marine player, I love the vindi. I know it's widely regarded as a noob magnet, but I don't think it deserves half the negative press it recieves.

As you well know, the BA vindi is Fast. This is awesome, and helps a lot with the short range. On the flipside, and as is often pointed out, ordnance templates and assault armies don't mix well.

However, there is nothing stopping us from running a pure shooty BA list, which wouldn't encounter said problem.

And thus, the Blood Vindication is born (ok, I'm probably not the first to think of this, but hey! at least I figured a cool name for it!)

Librarian w/ Shield of Sanguinius and Wings of Sanguinius: 100 pts
Librarian w/ Shield of Sanguinius and Wings of Sanguinius: 100 pts

5-man RAS squad (100) in Razorback w/ Dozer Blade and TLAC/Las Plas/TLLC turret (60): 160 pts
5-man RAS squad (100) in Razorback w/ Dozer Blade and TLAC/Las Plas/TLLC turret (60): 160 pts
5-man RAS squad (100) in Razorback w/ Dozer Blade and TLAC/Las Plas/TLLC turret (60): 160 pts


Baal Predator w/ Dozer Blade: 120 pts
Baal Predator w/ Dozer Blade: 120 pts
Baal Predator w/ Dozer Blade: 120 pts

Vindicator w/ Dozer Blade: 150 pts
Vindicator w/ Dozer Blade: 150 pts
Vindicator w/ Dozer Blade: 150 pts

Total: 1490 pts

10 pts remaining to do whatever with.

Some notes to keep in mind:
-The list has the ability to fight as a massive AV 13 wall or split into 2 smaller forces.
-While the dozer blades might seem like an uneeded luxury at first, having them on all vehicles means you pretty much ignore terrain, which is pretty damned good.
-Wings on the libbies will probably raise contention, but in reality, it's the best power to give them after Shield. You're not going to assault anyone with this list and neither are you going to hop out of your Razor to shooty the enemy, so giving them Wings at least allows them to continue doing their Shield duty without slowing down the rest of the force if/when someone takes away their metal bawkses.
-The "right" turret to use on the Razors will depend on who/what you're fighting, but in general, the las/plas one would probably be the most useful, giving the force a little bit of reach.
-The best way to scale this up would be to add some Razor squads as I'm at a loss as to what else would sinergise with the rest.

Thoughts?

Desc440"

My thoughts are basically this: replace Vindies with ACLC Preds. Drop Libby. Add another RBack squad. Add meltaguns/infernous pistols to RBack squads (which means dropping some dozer blades). Scale up by adding in more RBack squads, 2nd Libby if you wish and Dozers. Then you have a 6 pred list :P. At 1500 3 Razors is too few so you need at least 4 otherwise your opponent can just de-mech them and torrent them away pretty easily.

Now why no to the Vindies. Firstly, you can use the list with Vindies if you want (with above changes but Vindies instead of ACLC Preds). However, Vindies suffer from one gun-syndrome and weak side armor. Whilst BA overcomes their short-range issues, you're silly going to have that side armor issue unless you always have tanks parked next to it. This is viable certainly but also limits your mobility significantly and means your opponent is able to take advantage of that (beyond being predictable, having a larger footprint, easy to disrupt, etc.). You then get the issue of the Vindie basically being destroyed on a 3+ (or 2+ against AP1) as without it's gun it's nearly useless and unless you get Immobilised in a good position, it's again pretty useless. Obviously a tank without a gun is still better than a dead a tank but that's 145 points of a tank without a gun...not great.

Does the Vindie add anything fantastic to the army then? Yes and no. Everyone loves S10 ord and it's great at disrupting mech parking lots, instant killing things and basically scaring everyone. Unfortunately, it's not great at anything. Unless you catch a bunched up squad in the open, scatter and cover is generally going to deny the majority of the damage Vindies can do. Whilst their damage output isn't great, their psychological factor is huge. People tend to fixate on them and attempt to kill them rather than simply suppressing them. If your opponent keeps firing until it's dead, then well the Vindie has done it's job lol but against a competent player it'll get an armor pen roll and then ignored until next turn if it's still a threat. Compared to the ACLC Preds which for 10 points less bring 3 heavy weapons to bear? ACLC wins out every day of the week I'm afraid.