Yeah, fair point. That said I do like an overlord or 2 against nids as you just keep prepping and backing up. They're actually pretty solid against speed freaks (but again not spam) because of all the units of light vehicles being perfect shooting targets. They allow you (if you also have a colossus/land train/leviathan as well) to essentially control the flow of assaults coming at you rather than smashed by a giant, terrifying, orky tsunami.

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Oh, undoubtably the range makes them superb for prepping, although the trick against Nids is i find having something to take advantage of that prepping thanks to the damnable grot rule. Against bigger nid swarms i've even found Death Korps can struggle to get decent assault results. It's always precarious going into an assault rolloff when you're at best +1 or +2...

I see the overlords core strength in being able to really bully small fragile units that can normally stay out of range of retaliation should the see fit (i'm looking at you hydras!), along with sniping transports out of units to help control the enemy's momentum somewhat, while being able to take a degree of return fire - provided you can avoid any assaults of course. Using them in conjunction with berserkers for screening could be interesting though.

You say that, but when (as my overlord did against Tom) you take 4 overwatch hits and fail all your armour saves and die suddenly picking on those small units doesn't seem so clever.

They're also very useful when you need an overwatch bubble. Given they also have built in AA and are already popped up (so you don't make yourself more vulnerable by going onto overwatch a la vultures, speeders etc).

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So Overlords eh? Something that I'm convinced is going to have to happen to the EA squats list is a rebalancing of the Overlords. By most calculations they have to lose about 1/3 of the firepower to be balanced.

Theoryhammer goes like this:

6 Battle cannon shots are a lot. the 4+AP/4+AT might not sound so much compared to the more powered freak weapons but at the end of the day it's a big number of shots, unlikely to all miss and it's good against everybody. It doesn't matter if the target is infantry, tank or titan, those shots are going to take a huge chunk out of it. It also doesn't lose any effectiveness against Holofields or Living metal

Range: 75cm is a lot. Couple it to the 20cm move of the blimp you're able to reach out 95cm and touch almost anything on the board.

Support Craft/Pop up means that most cover is negated, the overlord can move over/see over any intervening terrain about 90% of the time.

Put this all together and you've got a unit that can reach our and deliver a fairly crippling punch to almost any unit on the board. Most other good firepower units (say Leman Russ or Warhound Titans) ofen might find a turn that they cannot fire, or they have to shoot at a sub par target. Not so overlords. They're always going to be shooting at the most vulnerable/tactically viable/need to be shot enemy unit on the board.

They are 'okay' as long as you take only 1 or 2 as they help prop up some other parts of the squat list, but spam them and they quickly become over powered. And this isn't even taking into account the 4 autocannons, bombs, AA flak and (in EA spotter).


Want more than Theory hammer? Last weekend was Cancon, 38 players, 6 rounds of epic, swiss style, uncomped. Probably the biggest and nastiest tournament world wide. Squats were a big show with three lists.

The list that brought home 1st place?

3 x Bezerkers
1 x Bikers
3 x Thunderfires
Goliath
Land Train
5 x Overlords

The player was indeed an excellent player, but he cleared all the opponents off the board with 30 battle cannon shots that he could bring down almost everywhere. The goliaths and land train added to the carnage with all the templates while the berserkers/thunderfires sat on objectives or added to the activation war.

Congratulations on the win but I will be finding a way to file back some of the overlords guns as it currently stands!

http://www.epicau.com/forums/viewtopic. ... 5&start=10

here are the lists taken. Pretty sure most are netEA, but as can be seen the formation selection is pretty divergent from what would be taken in the EUK meta regardless of list origin. (lots of land raiders, light on air assaults, etc)

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Meta has a lot to do with that result i suspect. That list would get shredded in the UK scene (which is where the list we're talking about is designed for), along with i suspect pretty much every other list taken to the event. Low activations, lack of scouting units, emphasis on ranged shooting rather than assaults would see you get a beating here. But hey, each area tends to play a different style of epic i guess.

So in your Oz meta given the lists people are bringing then sure - the Overlord is going to be strong. But it's not the overlord that's the issue imo, it's that you're letting them maximise their strengths (long ranged shooting) and not taking advantage of their weaknesses (i.e. they're assault bait). The other main issue is that the list was a bit more sensible in it's activation count, so it would be completely out activating most people, which is a huge deal when using relatively fragile long ranged guns.

Still, it will be interesting to see how the list does in it's first UK tournament year. I think it'll do reasonably well, but it won't be crushing events.

Interesting stuff. Pretty different to the first UK tournie run out for Squats where both Mark and I felt the overlords are a bit sub par. I assume the list is net ea as you'd be over on points in epic UK (I make it 3200 minimum on the UK list. On first UK tournie evidence less overlords is more as I finished above Mark who took 3 overlords to my 2 (and we're on the same level as players).

My other thought is that this is a skew list so great if you get the right match ups (as you basically ask you're opponent a question and if they can't answer it they're in real trouble). A bit like Jon's all shadowsword list which won in Exeter last year but struggled at the WW last week. TBH I'd be pretty pleased to face that list (though probably not the player if he' just won a 30 man tournie) if I was running anything that can fight a lot of assaults.

Before the nerf bat comes out is you might want to look at how you can restrict activations in the list by upping the points cost, changing the structure of some of the units. 100 point thunderfires aren't the best unit but they allow you to hit 13-14 activations pretty easily, a huge perk especially when looking at the cancon lists (if I found the right thread) there's a lot of 8-10 activation lists.

PS how did the other Squat lists get on?

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Given the number of really low activation lists + the lack of assault orientated lists I'd expect the Squats to have done well at Cannon

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NetEA NetERC Human Lists Chair
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Yes, there where some very weird builds at Cancon judging from the posted lists...

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What a surprise...
A Squat list is tailored for a powerhouse build.
Does EXTREMELY well.
Cries of a less than competitive meta, LOS rules and non EpicUK lists are to blame...

I really hope the EpicUK Squats are in the hands of experienced, power gamers or I'm afraid we'll see more themed, fun Dwarf lists and not what the list is truly capable of producing.

EpicUK lists are designed to produce high activation armies.
NetEA is not.

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The top players in Australia were the two eldar lists, plus the space wolf drop pod party.

The other tough players were the two squats, the Vraks and the dkok.

This year was surprisingly low on air assaults, but the main lists had a fair number of activations and knew how to assault. The overlords managed to take on the space wolf player is an example of how they were able the weather an assault swarm.

True line of sight for this tournament, however other local tourneys have the opposite 'abstracted cover and levels' system

I'm interested to find out what are the major differences in lists between Europe and Oz. There is always going to be a difference due to local meta. This year was few fliers but lots of space marine armies.

Absolute nonsense I don't see how you can back this up
If you look at the armies that were low activation at Cancon they were largely SL and SM where NetEA+EUK are pretty much the same. AMTL is more able to get higher activations with the NetEA list than the EUK.

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NetEA NetERC Human Lists Chair
NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion