So for some reason this morning edit: and never finished this post I got up and tried to make the most disgusting list I could for WH using IG allies. Why? Not sure but it seemed like a good idea and then I was able to convince Vince to play it against me today (rather than him using Nids for the first time, my Eldar or foot Guard)...results pending. Anyway the 1750 list is pretty brutal so I'll go through the development of the 2000 list and then scale it down as it is one of the lists which can do this rather well. Later on I might do a comparison article between this and the revised BA Flamestorm.
Anyway, both BA Flamestorm and Immo spam are based around through a lot of chassis at you which have Heavy Flamers which can be fired on the move (12") and contain little men and women who have meltaguns, bolters and 3+ saves. With the addition of the IG codex, WH were able to bring something the list sorely lacked: suppression fire thanks to Imperial Guard infantry platoons whilst BA Flamestorm is capable of doing this with Dreadnoughts and TL-assault cannons if desired. So the premise of this army is pretty simple, let's flesh it out.
We'll start with our core Immo spam style list and in a subsequent post I'll drop it down to 1750 and 1500. This means 3x Immolators in heavy support with 3x5x IST w/meltaguns for the cheap price of 405 (or the price of 3 exorcists). When combined with what else we get in the list this is going to give us 3 mobile scoring units (important) with meltaguns (important too but may be changed) on platforms which have side AV11 (important) and can move 12" and fire their twin-linked heavy flamer (important as well). Now some might argue the merits of Exorcists or not and I've looked at them here and here but it comes down to this. For the price of one Exorcist, I get a HWT w/3 autocannons and an Immolator. I'm taking the HWT and Immolator. More reliable firepower (always 6 shots) and then the usual arguments between gun tanks and infantry though this tank only has one gun so suffers a bit in comparison.
We then need to add more to our advancing AV11 wall of Immolators with...you guessed it, more Immolators. Recalling the tri-rhino tactic (or two), we want as many chassis moving forward as possible and since we are rotating them, want good side armor. Immolators are obviously perfect for this job as they can fire on the move and fry any occupants which get blasted out by the protected meltaguns. The cheapest way to get more Immolators and meltaguns? Celestians. A squad of 5 with 2 meltaguns and an Immolator sets us back an even 150. We'll take three of these bringing our total up to 855 points used with 6 Immolators and 12 meltaguns. We also need an HQ which is an easy choice with a cheap ass Palatine. Yes the extra 10 points for a Celestian gets you a lot but our army doesn't really use Faith or need the bonus statline buffs so we'll save 10 points. We have a couple of options here. We can give her a book of St. Lucius and she can sit in a bubble and act as a Lord Commissar (without Stealth though :() or grab her a Celestian retinue and add another Immolator to the list. For the moment we will stick with just the Book, setting us back 40 points (895).
Now here's the fun bit, adding in Infantry and what to do with Fast Attack. In a standard Immo spam list we grab Dominions with our FA slots but don't bring meltaguns with them and then a couple of 10 women SoB squads in Rhinos with more meltaguns. However, we're using Guard for our Troops outside of the ISTs so the SoB are out. Let's see how many autocannons we can get. Heavy Weapon Teams are the obvious bet but we also want a nice big juicy platoon and Chimeras. Why Chimeras? Well they aren't as useful for tri-rhinoing due to AV10 sides but they are very good at mech-training/self-blocking because they have AV12 on the front. You obviously need to protect their weak flanks but being able to screen Immos with AV12 is very useful and they also bring another heavy flamer and 2 S6 shots. So we'll start off the with Platoon Command squad, sticking them in a Chimera and we'll take a bunch of flamers. We could could replace these with meltaguns but BS3...eh we'll go with flamers for the moment. 100 gone (995). We'll then look at taking at least 3 infantry platoons with an autocannon (no Commissar for the moment). That's 180 and then 165 for three more Chimeras (1340). Now we still have a bunch of points to work with! We don't have any Exos so let's take the maximum HWT we can for one platoon. 5 HWT with autocannons sets us back a mere 300 points (1640) and we've still got quite a few points to play with (we're not even at 1750 yet!).
We probably need more advancing units however and as much as I'd like to have the Palatine give out a stubborn bubble, she gets a Celestian retinue with Immolator and meltaguns for 150 (1790). No we've got a few options here. We can cut back one of the HWT or Chimeras and grab 2x5x Dominions w/Immolator and have 30 points left (enough for 3 flamers or two meltaguns between the squads) which is an okay choice. We can also grab another Palatine/Celestian combo taking us to 1980 or we could add in another infantry squad w/AC + Commissar and add in another IST squad (book of St. Lucius for this) or with some point tweaking get two more infantry squads and Chimeras (need to lose 10 pts after dropping Book and a flamer from the PCS). Personally I'd lean towards the Dominion squads or two more infantry squads to up the vehicle number count. Adding the Infantry squads gives us:
Palatine w/5x Celestians w/2x meltaguns, Immolator
3x5x Celestians w/2x meltaguns, Immolator
PCS w/2x flamers, Chimera w/ML/HF
4x Infantry Platoon w/AC, Chimera w/ML/HF
5x HWT w/autocannons
3x5x IST w/2x meltaguns
3x Immolators
Totals: 1991 points
12 vehicles (7 Immolators, all w/Smokes)
73 infantry + 19 HWT
There you have it. A disgusting amount of firepower (38 S7 shots acorss 6-9 targets; 15 S6 shots across 5 targets) and a lot of armor moving towards you (12) with a bunch of meltaguns (14) and heavy flamers (7 twin-linked, 5 normal) and over 100 infantry wounds. Sold.
Edit: changed the list as I cannot add. I had the HWT priced at 65 points when they arein fact 75 per team. One infantry platoon/Chimera has been dropped. Only 12 vehicles at 2000 is a bit *sadface* so might need to re-work things...
