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| Adjustments & Changes to the preliminary
Army List By Dan Moore, 6 December 2003 |
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| Introduction As I made preparations for the tournament, I thought about the strategy and tactics that I would use with my Wych cult and the units that comprised it. I also had a couple opportunities to playtest the army to see how the army would perform on the battlefield. Through this process I made several adjustments and changes to the army list that I hoped would make them more effective on the the battlefield. These adjustments are listed below along with my reasoning for each one: |
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| Lelith Hesperax (and
retinue) Originally, I had intended to use Lelith as an independent character that could be attached to any of my Wych squads as needed. I liked the prospect of the flexibility this would afford me during initial deployment of my units. Upon further consideration however, I realized that Lelith would likely be more useful with a retinue of Wyches. Lelith's retinue is like a normal Wych squad with the added bonus that they can pick their combat drug results at the start of the game instead of having to roll randomly for them. This benefit could be extremely useful because it would allow me to adjust the Wych squads' abilities as needed to be most effective on the battlefield. The decision that I needed to make was about which squad should become Lelith's Retinue. Ultimately, I decided to use the smaller Wych squad with haywire grenades. My thinking was that the haywire grenades coupled with a 12" assault option from combat drugs would allow the retinue to quickly engage and destroy enemy vehicles. I also adjusted the squad by eliminating their blasters and equipping them with wyche weapons. This would allow them to be more effective when assisting Lelith in assaults. My intention was to make Lelith and her retinue a fast, versatile unit that could deal with my opponents' most threatening units whether vehicle or troops. During playtesting of the Wych Cult with Lelith and her new retinue, I made several new observations that lead to further tweaking of the retinue. On two different occasions Lelith and her retinue were unable to defeat units that had good (3+) armor saves. The problem was an over-reliance on Lelith to kill everything with her agonizer. If my dice rolling for Lelith was bad (as it often seemed to be) then my HQ could not seem to deliver an initial "knock-out punch" to whatever enemy unit it faced. I decided that the best solution to the problem was to add a succubus with agonizer to Lelith's retinue to give the unit a second model that was capable of dealing with high toughness or well-armored foes. Another consideration that favored the addition of a succubus/agonizer to Lelith's retinue was the use of the retinue's combat drugs to gain a 12" assault. The problem here is that while the retinue can assault 12" with drugs, Lelith cannot. Therefore, if the retinue uses the 12" assault option then Lelith will be the last one to join the assault. Additionally, some members of the retinue will need to lag behind the inital assault rush to maintain squad coherency between Lelith and her retinue. What this means is that in some instances maybe only 2 or 3 Wyches in the retinue would be able to make base-to-base contact with the enemy if they made a 12" assault move. With only a few wyches in base-to-base it is imperative that one of them be a succubus with agonizer to inflict the maximum number of enemy casualties during the initial assault. Assuming this is successful, then the remainder of the HQ, including Lelith, can "pile in" and finish off the enemy unit during the next close combat phase. One final note regarding the succubus was that I decided to equip her with plasma grenades. The reason for this was that if my HQ assaulted an enemy unit in cover, then the succubus would still be able to attack first and hopefully kill enough models to win the assault. |
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| Hellions and Reaver
jetbikes Originally, I planned to use a large squad of hellions with a succubus upgrade as one of my fast attack choices. I painted and converted the necessary models to field up to 9 hellions and a hellion succubus with agonizer and close combat weapon. The hellion models turned out well enough for my painting standards, although I had this nagging feeling that the succubus was not distinct enough to stand out from the rest of the squad. During playtesting, I discovered an interesting anomoly about my hellions. They tended to attract more enemy firepower than any other unit on the battlefield. For whatever reason my opponents targetted them in preference to my wych raiders, HQ raider, and jetbikes! I was quite puzzled by this and asked my opponents what they were thinking. The only response I got was that the hellion squad scared them because it was a unit that they had never faced before. Even my explanation of the hellions meager capabilities failed to dissuade them from targetting the squad. Needless to say, none of my hellions ever got to assault an enemy unit before being shot to death. On the plus side, my other wych units had much less firepower directed at them and were able to assault at full strength in many instances. The unusual tendency of my Hellions to attract enemy fire made me rethink how I would use them in the tournament. I reasoned that perhaps the best tactic when using them was as a distraction to draw enemy fire away from more valuable units much like a Talos does. Perhaps the fact that hellions were little used would work in my favor since they would be an unknown factor for my opponents. Most players, when faced with an unknown threat, tend to respond by shooting at it. Since the Hellions would be used more as a distraction I decided to cut back on their points cost as much as possible. I started by reducing the squad to 7 models and using some of the points saved to add another jetbike. As I further re-worked my army list I began to run short of points. Ultimately, I was faced with a decision to keep either the reaver jetbike succubus (which I had yet to convert) or the hellion succubus (which was converted but not distinctive.) With 5 days before the tournament I decided to use a reaver succubus despite the need to convert and paint one on short notice. Since I was trying to minimize the points cost of my hellion squad the squads succubus was too expensive to justify keeping. As it turned out, the decision to use a reaver succubus was a fortuitous one for me because the model ended up winning the award for best single miniature in the tournament! |
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| Wych squads My original army list included 4 wych squads mounted on raiders. One of the squads was equipped with blasters and haywire grenades for an anti-vehicle role. With the conversion of one squad to my HQ retinue this left enough points for 3 squads of wyches. I decided to make the squads as versatile as possible since I had heard that there would be many Imperial Guard (tanks) armies at the tournament. Two of the squads were increased to 10 models and given anti-vehicle capability in the form of 2 blasters per squad. The succubus in each of these squads was equipped with haywire grenades in addition to her agonizer. The third squad was cut back to a total of eight models including the succubus since I did not have sufficient points (or appropriate models) to give this squad blasters. |