Thursday, January 17, 2013

New Dark Angels Codex Thoughts: Troops!



Old School here to continue my initial thoughts and ramblings on the New Dark Angels Codex. Since I have already covered HQs and Elites (and since I need to keep it brief, haha), I will talk about the troops today.


The Dark Angels, while having a ton of FOC swapping characteres, have pretty much the stock standard two choices for Space Marine troops; the Scouts and the Tactical Marines.

The Tactical Marines are the big deal across the web and with good reason. They weigh in a 14pts per model with LD and stubborn. They also can't ever choose to run away (like when they can't hurt a Furioso).What they can do though, is take a heavy weapon in a five man squad, providing access to that weapon for under 100pts! To me, this is a blessing and a curse for a couple of reasons. First, I feel like I am going to see a lot of five man flakk caddies, which not only is boring, but I think it is a trap, being easy to deal with for units like the heldrake or necron shooting, which (barges on the ground) don't care about your missiles ... and I don't think single flakks are super great for downing flyers. What is good about it, is that you can fill in your troops with small scoring ATSKNF units so you can focus on better quality troops and units from other slots across the army.

With that being said, the Tactical also shines in combination with other DA combos, like the banner of devestation or with Ld10 from the mighty Azreal! All in all, there are a lot of good uses for tactical DA units and I am glad to see the green wing get some love (especial for my good buddy Dues). I plan to try out a lot of variations on DA tactical squads and see what fits my style in conjunction with the rest of the units I want to play (BLACK KNIGHTS!!!)

Now, onto Scouts. Scouts get the standard options of bolters, pistols and CCWs or Sniper rifles. They are still BS3 marines (with BS4 Sgts), but they do weigh in at 12pts, which would be great ... if the tacticals weren't so affordable already. I can certainly see the use in infiltrating cheap units. The thing that I get hung up on is that they really don't seem to fill a niche for me. They have sniper rifles that really don't cut it for real sniping. They have access to flakk, but it costs the same as tactical flakk, they are cheap, but so are tacticals, they are still drakebait, but are even less a priority. I guess you could use them as the beneficiary of a banner of devestation, but tacs again, do this better. I guess I'm also not a big fan of scouts in any dex, so I may be a little bias, but I don't see myself messing around with these guys at all.

Overall, the troops are there to help fill gaps in your list's abilities and offer cheaper scoring. Some lists will make a huge use of them (I have already seen 60 green tacticals in play) and others will take advantage of the FOC swap, maybe adding the traditional troops for extra fire or scoring. I plan to play around alot, but I think tacs will always have a place in my DA lists from now on.

That is my initial take on the troops. What are your thoughts? How will you fill this section of your FOC.

17 comments:

  1. I love my scouts. The various load outs are great for different things, but I like to use them to camp on objectives and guard the backfield. People tend to ignore or underestimate them quite a bit because "they are only scouts".

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    1. Either the enemy ignores your scouts and you can camp on an objective and shoot MCs and infantry with snipers, or they'll try to uproot them and leave the rest of my army less to deal with. Their main drawback in my mind is the 4+ armour, but with cover and camo cloaks, that isn't really an issue (And still, if they're shooting/assaulting my scouts, they're not shooting my other units!).
      But back to the Dark Angels, i really like how the dedicated deathwing isn't as powerful unless you use it along with other units. It was really boring with the last codex because Deathwing was all you heard about from the Dark Angels.

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  2. The point costs of the scouts just dont make any sense to me. Yet I feel like that is more due to how -cheap- the tactical marines are in comparison rather than the price of the scouts themselves.

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  3. A friend is giving me an ADL for my birthday, and I was (and still am) considering purchasing a box of scouts to man it. However, I already have 30 tac marines, and financially it makes more sense to me to just throw a 5 man squad of tacs behind the line. A little more expensive, but BS4 on a quad-gun seems like a better idea than BS3.

    If I REALLY want a badass sniper squad of scouts, it feels more effective to take Space Marine allies with Telion. Considering Lysander already feels like he wants to hang out with Deathwing, and a Tac squad is a Tac squad, it's not that tough to do.

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    1. Lysander hanging out with Deathwing? I like the way you think!

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    2. Well, you've gotta fill that HQ slot somehow. ;)

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    3. Or how about guard allies and take a squad of ratlings, at 10 pts a model at bs4 with camo cloaks already... seems like a better deal...

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    4. But Lysander! Also, Telion's BS6 makes the anti-air/tank guns of the ASL considerably scarier.

      It's an expensive way to go, though.

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    5. Isn't the scout sarge already BS4? So he could man the gun while the rest snipe. It's cheaper, but it not as fun as Lysander.

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    6. but primaris psyker and ratlings...

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  4. I was bummed to see that the scouts don't have the ability to take teleport homers. I was jazzed to do a couple units as spotters for the Deathwing terminators, sort of a '1st and 10th' synergy but alas it was not to be...

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    1. I think the sergeants can take them, can't they?

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    2. Not that I can tell unfortunately, it's not in the unit upgrade options in the army list list, and I don't recall seeing Teleport Homers as an option in the 'additional equipment' list that characters can draw from. I'll have to take another look...

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  5. So, I was thinking about the command squad, two tac squads, and a defense line for boltery goodness. Then I thought about it... That's a 3+ w/ 4+ cover at 14pts a model. Then I thought about scouts with camo cloaks... 3+ cover and 4+ when ignored... And at the same price point. It's something to think about...

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  6. That's it. I'm officially challenging you to make a DA army consisting primarily of scouts led by a Chaplain. Gauntlet, thrown!

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    1. Sounds like a Raven Guard army. Probably more achievable with this codex than C:SM currently, on scout costing and stealth enabling options alone.

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