Goatboy 40k: Lets make a balanced list shall we?
Goatboy here again talking about some of the things I see spamming the comment sections. The thought that duplicating units is some how wrong?
I know everyone has their own opinion on that with the usually split in what most people like to spit with bile the noncompetitive and the competitive sides of the hobby. Personally, I think we are all competitive since we all like to win every now and again, so really it should come down to the just the Sharks and the Jets but we can go over that another time. What I want to do today is take the article JWolf wrote and try to create a list that matches that type of game, but still fit into the whole “Goatboy” mentality of covering all my bases.
So before we go into that, lets look at what I think makes a balanced army. To create a balanced list you need to play all aspects of the game. That means you would need an assault unit, long range unit, vehicle busting unit, and an objective holding unit. There are multiple facets for each choice, as some are better a holding an assault and others are mixtures of all these roles in the game. You start to see more of this mixture in the newer codexes as they create things that fit a bunch of different holes.
So from that point, lets look at the start of a list that tries to fit in different things that are not just straight copies of each unit in hopes to fill in all the holes. I personally see nothing wrong with duplicate units. The game has started to push towards that way as you start to see the troop unit become a jack of all trades choices usually limited to two different choices. But lets look at a basic 1500 point list that tries to fill every role and still have different choices. (I hope you 1500pt fans say thank you)
Blood Angels/Goat Angels/Make the Interwebs Mad Angels – 1500
HQ: Reclusiarch
Elites: Assault Terminators, 3 Th/SS, 2 LC
Transport: LRC, MM
Elites: Sanguinary Priest X 2, Jump Pack x 1
Troops: Assault Squad (10), Meltagun X 2, PW
Troops: Tactical Squad (10), Flamer, Lascannon, PW
Transport: Razorback, TWL Lascannon
Troops: Assault Squad (5), Flamer
Transport: Razorback, TWL Hvy Flamer
Heavy: Devastator Squad (5), ML X 4
Total – 1495pts
Lets break apart into the Assault, Range, Vehicle Busting, and Objective Holding
Assault:
Assault Terminators with FNP, Reroll misses, fearless, and furious charge. I don’t know about you, but this is one of the hardest hitting assault units in the game. Not much can survive a charge from these guys, so I went ahead and put this in here to really cover the assault elements needed in a balanced army. I went with a Reclusiarch as the HQ, as I feel that the fearless benefit mixed with reroll misses on the charge should do you well in the game. If this unit doesn’t get a charge in the game, then that game was most likely a loss.
We have a secondary assault element with the Assault squad in jump packs. This is the clean up crew designed either to drop in and take an objective or at least help out with the Sanguinary Priest. Do not look for them to crush an opponent, as they just do not have enough crazy attacks to make a dent. But do look for them to be a good help unit that can be easily sacrificed if it means giving you an extra turn from your opponents fire power/other elements of their army.
Long Range
This game has changed into a giant vehicle drama so having some sort of busting power at range will always be helpful. The devastators are the actual meat and potatoes of this army element. Missile launchers are cheap enough that if these guys get shot at, the lose of them won’t hurt your overall chances most of the time. This also helps versus some of those flying vehicles we are starting to see come up every now and again.
The tactical squad fills in that hole with two options in the lascannon and the Razorback lascannon. I set it up this way to give you the option of two targets with your list. The tactical squad is always going to combat squad, even in a Kill point game. I have found the so called denial of one kill point just means it is easier to trap your unit and kill them all off, versus having to waste two turns trying to get the unit. When I see a low 6 point Kill point army, I just think, well I just have to kill 6 things instead of the 15 things on my side.
Vehicle Busting
There are going to be times you need to bust open a vehicle with some super hot popcorn cooking power. Thus the amount of melta within the list. It is not always useful, but I find having at least 3 to 4 will help you make sure you get to use it at least once in the game. I also like that it is an assault weapon, meaning I get to charge in after shooting off my death shot. You can see this in the dual melta nature of assault squad, as well as the Multi-Melta on the LRC. It isn’t as much as others seem to want to play in a list, but at 1500 points you normally don’t have the extra points to Melta out your force.
Objective Holding
I have two units designed to do this and that is the combat squad lascannon Tactical squad as well as the small Razorback squad. The flamers built into the small squad should help it get rid of any jerks hiding in the bushes too. So it doubles as a quick objective controller too. I know there is not a whole lot of objective controllers in this list, as I felt the inclusion of the Assault Terminators would be too much of a benefit to the army versus having more feet pounding the table top.
Now as you can see, the list has no duplicates in the design but it does cover all avenues of the game. I think it will give most armies a good challenge. I don’t think it is a a list that is designed to crush everyone as normally lists that do that usually push towards one avenue of the game and get really good at that side of it. We have all seen this in the terribly named Leaf Blower and the old popular kid Nob Bikerz lists that have come to the forefront of army building.
I wanted to try my hand at building a list that wasn’t just a copy past of one unit in one section and then move onto another Force Org part of the book. I might not agree with JWolf’s or others choices but I still could see the merit in building a Highlander (Magic the Gathering reference) style list that would be fun, challenging and still competitive. I also wanted to start looking at 1500 point lists as I was lucky enough in my matchups and games to get an invite to Las Vegas next year too, so I might as well always keep those small lists in mind no matter how much I don’t really like it.
As usual, shoot me an email to [email protected] if you have any questions and let me know what you think of this list and the lower point levels in general.
