Khornehusker RTT, lessons learned..

Last month I attended the Khornehusker RTT in Omaha, NE. It was a great RTT with 24 people attending. My space marines were not ready with the new toys of the codex, but I thought I could push through a vehicle heavy, 5th edition list.   I was wrong, but all was not lost. I learned several lessons and did pull some good units out of that list for future use.

 

 

 

 

 

My plan was to run a 5th edition list of 2x vindicators along side a land raider redeemer. I ran some land speeder typhoons, a storm raven, and a storm talon. For troops I had a couple 5 man squads in razorbacks with twin lascannons plus 2x scout squads in land speeder storms. In the land raider I had 5 thunder hammer storm shield terminators plus a level 2 librarian. 

 

 

 

 

I knew I would be facing several lists with lots of riptides and wraithknights. They were there plus there were several daemon lists with 4-5 flying daemon princes. I thought the vindicators would help me control the middle like they had in the past. Boy did I miscalculate that! Riptides do not fear vindicators. Sure they will put a wound on them, but in the end it is just one wound. They really need a rule like the cannon in fantasy, with d3 or d6 wounds per model. Heck, instant death on a 6 to wound would help and be fluffy.

 

So that plan did not work. My vindi's spent the game missing, not normal for me, and my opponents simply ignored or killed them. The land raider was good, but not game winning good. The storm raven was very good, but one game it did not come on till turn 4. I think this is a flaw with fliers and a reason flier heavy armies are not dominating.

 

 

 

 

The good things I took away from the 0-3 tournament, is that typhoons were money. The heavy bolters and missiles were good for mowing down infantry and throwing wounds on the big guys. I also liked the typhoon missile launcher on the storm talon. having strength 8 was huge and being able to put blast templates on infantry was nice.

 

 

 

Land speeder storms and scout squads were also very useful. They were mobile and able to be were I needed them to be. They were also pretty survivable. The storm gets a jinx save if it moved and that is more than a rhino gets.

My list was missing grav guns. I needed a unit with multiples of these weapons to allow me to kill the new large monstrous creatures in one turn. I needed to run either a unit of centurions or a bike squad or two with a couple grav guns. Another space marine army there ran a unit of grav centurions, and he seemed to have good results with them. For my Bugeater list I plan on adding them, and another land raider redeemer. Two land raiders will control the middle if I have a shooty centurion squad and an assault terminator squad. I have also picked up some Dark Angels and will add a Libby on a bike with the power field. A 4++ for the Redeemers will make them very scary and hopefully get me to turn 2 with them.

Now to go work so I can buy the $200 in models I need!