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Show Notes
Date
6-6-16
Intro
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News
- The Warmachine F.A.T. Mats are now up for pre-order! Jump in there and secure yours, today! They will begin shipping on Monday, June 13th.
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- New orders for Games Workshop: Scenic bases and new paints! 25% off this week from Frontline Gaming.
- Las Vegas Open 2017 will occur February 3rd through the 5th and continues to have exciting developments! We will be joined not only by Privateer Press, Games Workshop, the Black Library, Forge World, but also by Fantasy Flight Games, Cool Mini or Not, Hawk Wargames and many more! We’ll also have some fantastic independent artists coming out to share their art such as former Games Workshop artists. If you or someone you know is an artist that would like to come to the LVO and show off their stuff, please reach out to us at Sales@FrontlineGaming.org. If you’d like to get ahead of the crowd and book your hotel room early, you can do so by following this link!
Upcoming ITC Events
- GT: Bugeater GT, Omaha, NE, June 10-12th, 2016
- Operation Nautilus, Sopot, Poland, June 11th, 2016
- June ITC Event, Game Empire Pasadena, Pasadena, CA, June 11th, 2016
- Acropolis Games June 40k tournament, Adrian, MI, June 11th, 2016
- Crimson Sage Games Club Tournament, Ontario, Canada, June 11th, 2016
- Mad Hatter’s 40k ITCSummer Brawl, Amazing Discoveries, Tucson, AZ, June 11th, 2016
- Rampager League ITC Event #1, Everything Games, Buffalo Grove, IL, June 12th, 2016
- Blood of Kittens Presents: Road to the Bay Area Open 2016, EndGame, Oakland, CA, June 12th, 2016
- MAJOR EVENT: Terracon, Naracoorte, South Australia, June 11-12th, 2016
- Granite City Waaagh Fest, St Cloud, MN, June 11, 2016
Rumors: The Rumor Section is gathered from the web and is not in any way information we receive from any manufacturer nor is it necessarily accurate. This section of the podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.
Rant Session
Tactics Corner
- Defeating Battle Company: Battle Company armies function well for several reasons.
- They are resilient due to being numerous, 3+ saves and ATSKNF. Battle Companies have lots and lots of bodies, tons of transports, near immunity to morale and good saving throws. This makes them a tough army as they can absorb a ton of casualties and still function.
- Battle Companies excel at winning objective missions due to to much ObSec. Nearly every unit in the army has the Objective Secured rule, granting them an enormous advantage.
- Battle Companies can pack big firepower in Grav Cannons, Melta Guns, etc.
- The keys to defeating Space Marine Battle Company armies lay in understanding target priority.
- If playing Rhino/Razorback spam Battle Company, the key is to take away their mobility. With the transports dead, the Marines are fairly easy to deal with, particularly if they rely on Grav and Melta weapons to do the heavy lifting.
- Remember the range bands of the Battle Company’s weapons. Measure from the hatches on the Rhinos and note precisely how far they can possibly shoot and stay 0.1″ outside of that range until you are ready to strike.
- If possible, try to force a flank, and eat up the Battle Company from one end to the other. They take up a huge footprint on the tabletop. If you have a greater concentration of force in a smaller footprint, you can establish local firepower superiority which means in a given physical space, you pack more punch than the Marines do, giving you the advantage so long as you can maintain that spacial advantage.
- If possible, dictate when your opponent uses his Doctrines. They’re very powerful and if you can dangle a bait unit to try and get them to pop one of those valuable doctrines at the wrong time for them, that is to your advantage.
- If you have easy access to an Inquisitor with Servo Skulls, or have infiltrating/Scout units that can stop the Battle Company Scout Move (assuming they’re playing White Scars) that can be huge for mitigating their brutal alpha strike.
- Focus on completely destroying units, if even a single Marine escapes from a battered and hides, he can go on to win the game by jumping on an objective.
- If facing Drop Pod Battle Company, deployment and reserves are the critical tactics to use against them. Present only units that can either take the punch of the initial drop, or that you can afford to lose. You have to accept a certain amount of casualties, then its all about the counter punch.
- If you can trade units in your favor, go for it. Give them a transport vehicle, but take a squad or two and a drop pod in return.
- Once the Marines are on the ground, its relatively way to avoid them. Spread out and move away and you can often leave them in the dust and out of range to do anything.
- Castling in the corner works well to present a very limited front to the enemy, reducing the amount of targets they can engage and keeping many units out of melta/grav range.
- Both types of Battle Companies hate melee. This is usually the best way to take them out. If you have decent melee units, get in there and beat them up in combat. If facing White Scars, multi assault where possible to increase the odds of one unit failing their Hit and Run, keeping you safely locked in combat.
- If the Battle Company player has a powerful melee unit on the table such as a Bike Command Squad with character support, etc., focus all of you ranged assets on destroying it. That is your number 1 target priority.
- If facing an assault oriented Drop Pod army, castling is a poor choice as it reduces your escape routes and allows your opponent to engage multiple targets at once. In this instance, you want to spread out.
- If they’re rocking the Librarius Conclave, these are high priority, right after taking out mobility. If they’re on Bikes, as they often are, they become target priority #1, and will often be in a melee unit which conincides with the above commentary on assault units.
- Often the will take the 10th Company auxiliary formation. Do not underestimate the little Scouts! They are incredibly useful for getting in the way, flanking and harassing your army. Its easy to discount them but do so at your peril, they can often be the critical unit that assaults your valuable shooting units and disrupts them, or simply gets in the way of one of your units and causes you to lose the game. Mentally note how you will deal with them.
- Lastly, alsways stay cool! Fighting Battle Company feels like an insurmountable battle until it isn’t. What typically happens is that you will be overwhelmed, then you hit that point of critical mass and the Battle Company falls apart and loses its teeth.
- If playing Rhino/Razorback spam Battle Company, the key is to take away their mobility. With the transports dead, the Marines are fairly easy to deal with, particularly if they rely on Grav and Melta weapons to do the heavy lifting.
Rules Lawyer
Completed Commissions
List Review
Hey there Frontline,
I have a Tau FSE ITC list I would like your opinion on. I am still fairly new to the ITC rule type and have had problems winning the maelstrom objectives running Tau. I am willing to look at model options not currently in the list, however I am worried about bringing Stormsurges due to them potentially giving up maelstrom points when I am already having problems there. Here is the list:
CAD (FSE)
- Farsight 165
- 3 Crisis w/bonding,6xfusion 159
- 1 Crisis w/bonding,2xion 53
- 1 Crisis w/bonding,2xburst 43
- 1 Crisis w/bonding,2xflamer 33
- 1 Crisis w/bonding,2xflamer 33
- Y’vahra w/early warning override 235
- Y’vahra w/early warning override 235
- Void Shield Generator x3 100
1056
Riptide Wing
- Riptide w/ion,sms,early warning override 190
- Riptide w/ion,sms,early warning override 190
- Riptide w/ion,sms,early warning override 190
570
Drone Net
- 4 Gun Drones 56
- 4 Marker Drones 56
- 4 Marker Drones 56
- 4 Marker Drones 56
224
1850
I have played a couple games with this list with success, however one thing I have read online is that Y’vahras should run with stims to increase the survivability (though I am not sure where I would cut 70 points from). I have played it as mostly a beta strike list, with all the crisis suits in reserve and the rest within the void shield, Y’vahras can snag far objectives or leap into the fray turn 2 when the reserves start to arrive.
I would greatly appreciate any help and input you could give, thanks in advance.
The main problem with Battle company in tournaments is the time limit. Battle Company is silly and free ten obsec tanks is just depressing, but it’s not *that* bad when games go 5-7 turns. You need that many turns to kill enough of it.
Tournament games featuring free unit armies like this tend to get only 3-4 turns in though, and that makes Battle Company game-breakingly good. I can’t tell you how many games I’ve seen Battle Company players just swarm the objectives with obsec and have time run out for the easy win. It can be incredibly frustrating for the other player and frustrating for TOs who want to provide a good gaming experience for their players.
What if Free Transports were not affected by the Objective Secure rule? Would that help? Probably not for the time issue, but it could even the field for every other army out there who can’t get free objsec units.
Of course it would help. 🙂 As would appropriate time length/point totals for tournament games.
I like the idea of capping total obsec units in an army personally.
A better solution is to make them pay for their transports but keep Objective Secured. That makes the game faster and the formation less broken.
They might still play in such a way to not finish their games, but they wouldn’t be as effective at it.
The fact one of your attack bikes has a base, and the other does not bothers me to no end.
Not as much as the seam where the two halves of the fender come together bugs me. 🙂
I should say, those Rhinos are gorgeous though.
We were promised hugs at the start of the cast! False advertising!
Lol, my bad!
I like the Deathpack, or rather, three of them to deal with the Battle Company. Usually good for a couple multi charges and four dead units per turn. Doesnt do so hot vs Flyrants though?
Yeah, powerful melee units smash Battle Company up pretyt dang well.
I have tried this and it doesn’t end well. You lose maelstrom and they just focus down the thunderwolf units. it takes at lest two turns to get to the shooting parts. Space wolves assault list don’t have much of a chance it take Battle Company down innless it is a kill point game. And you still lose maelstrom.
In the ITC you can only take 2 Deathpacks anyways.
$150.50/night. Is that the FLG “room block rate” or the real rate?
Did a test game vs White Scar BC, 3 units of 2 quad mortars really worked for taking out Rhinos. Barrage is nice later on as well, to take out the hunters eye unit.
Well 350+ points of free transports to screen and make sure you get to shoot don’t hurt anything ether.
This is a army that can handle death stars well, as they have lots of screening units and can have it’s own mini star with conclave of its own. This unit will always get a chance to get its powers off vs. assault units.
The Fulmination Discipline: •Electrodisplacement: power at lest gives you a chance playing a assault based army if played raw. You can at lest kill a couple of transports before they scatter all over the board and they still get to shoot you.
With the nerf to it battle company can just back a way for a few turns if need shooting the whole army at the assault unit with little to no damage to it self.
Just saw a 10+thud gun renegade army with tons of bubble rap almost win the Guardian cup tournament. Crazy amount of shooting. Battle company would have hatted that.
So would a death star as well.
Just remember, any arguments for Electrodisplacement helping to defeat BC also can be used by BC to move your assault units away. The knife cuts both ways.
That power is honestly nothing good for the meta.
I’d like to see any army that gets free units (Battle Co, Summoning, etc) generate maelstrom points for their opponent. Say a maelstrom point for every one hundred free points or so. Something like that.
So excited for Vegas, I hope I can get a job and go. How many hotels are in the block?
But if I get a job, I might not get the vacation time…….
The Block is big, bigger than last year so there should be plenty of space, buddy!
As usual you guys develop great articles. Could You Do One On The Multi Knight armies. flyrants etc. Always trying to build a list for these armies.