Email in: Building a Mephiston list

Dakka

"I've been watching the vassal ladder and one of the players, Sigurd, uses a mech-based BA list which includes mephiston. He's been doing pretty well, as his ladder ranking evidences but I'm not too sure if it's a 'good' list to use mephiston. It seems to try and take elements of pred spam, drop dreads and normal mech and squeeze it all together. It doesn't have the traditional FNP/FC bubbles that are synonymous with BA, but again, as I said, he's been doing pretty well so far. I'll post the list below, as a guide, but I'd be keen if you could design a list which uses Meph to the best of his abilities (as obviously I'm not asking for a list critique of someone else's army).


2000
250 Mephiston, Lord of Death
175 Furioso Librarian - wings of sanguinus, shield of sanguinus
175 Furioso Librarian - wings of sanguinus, shield of sanguinus
135 Furioso Dreadnought - blood talons, meltagun, heavy flamer
35 Drop Pod - storm bolter
100 5 Assault Squad - bolt pistol x5
55 Razorback - lascannon, twin-linked plasma gun
100 5 Assault Squad - bolt pistol x5
55 Razorback - lascannon, twin-linked plasma gun
130 5 Assault Squad - bolt pistol x3, meltagun, infernus pistol, meltabombs
15 Rhino - storm bolter
125 5 Assault Squad - bolt pistol x3, meltagun, infernus pistol
15 Rhino - storm bolter
115 Baal Predator - flamestorm cannon
115 Baal Predator - flamestorm cannon
135 Predator - autocannon, lascannon x2
135 Predator - autocannon, lascannon x2
135 Predator - autocannon, lascannon x2

Thanks. Stay Pink!"

This e-mail was primarily about putting Mephiston into lists and I asked the e-mailer for an actual list to critique. We'll look at Mephiston first -

he's pretty damn easy to put into a list. You take a list, replace the stock standard Librarian and drop 100+ points elsewhere, and bang - you add Mephiston. Now it's important to know what he brings to the table over a Libby. You still have the psychic hood utility but rather than a guy who helps your army (i.e. shield, unleash, lance, fear, etc.) you have a guy who is a very scary beater unit. He sucks against anything with lots of high invulnerable saves or armor ignoring attacks/high strength but he will murder squads without this. I.e. he's great against anything which isn't a dedicated combat unit which can reliably wound him. With T6 and no invul, that's what you get. He's basically a pint-sized MC and this is great as he is easily hidden.

This is where Mephiston really comes into his own. Whilst including him in Jumper based armies is a possibility, your opponent can negate his high toughness by shooting him early with high strength firepower and you're relying a lot on the casting of Wings to keep up with the army (though this is true in every army he is in). In a mech or hybrid list however, Mephiston gets to hide and whilst he still needs to cast wings to keep up with your army, he is far less vulnerable to early firepower and can thus be unleashed upon pleb units of your opponent. This might not seem great, after all he's very expensive and isn't going toe-to-toe with TH/SS but when you compare him to ASM of similar cost, he simply rips through units and is quite durable in turn. This gives your army some reliability in combat.

And this is how and why you want to take Mephy.

To the list - I like it with the exception of the Dreads. I love my some Libby Dreads but I feel in this case running more ASM in Razorbacks/Rhinos is the better bet with some added Priests for my MSU MEQ > your MSU MEQ. A single Dread in a pod can disrupt your opponent nicely, especially if it's a Libby Dread with Blood Lance - but it's very vulnerable to meltaguns in these cases.