For this battle, Hena and I faced off. He took command of rebel xenophilic Imperial Guard, while I dispatched an Ordo Xenos airborne strike force to destroy them as an example of those who traffic with aliens.

Hena’s list
500 Regimental HQ
50  + Hydra

650 Tank Company
50  + Hydra

500 Super Heavy Tank Company
 - 3 Baneblades

250 Artillery Battery
 - 3 Manticores

250 Artillery Battery
 - 3 Bombards

100 Sentinels

200 Shadowsword

150 Flak Battery

150 Rough Rider Platoon

150 Thunderbolts

My list:
3000 Ordo Xenos List

Inquisitor 200
Death Cultists 50 250

Gun Cutter 125
Glavian 75 200

Inquisitor 200
Support Staff 15 215

Gun Cutter 125
Glavian 75 200

Inquisitor 200
2x Warrior 70
Support Staff 15
Death Cultists 50
Inquisitor Lord 50
4x Aquila 200 585

Deathwatch Kill Team 325
Librarian

Thunderhawk 250

Deathwatch Kill Team 325
Captain 325

Thunderhawk 250

Deathshriek Squadron 200

Deathshriek Squadron 200

Deployment:



Hena deployed in the lower right corner of the board. The sentinels deployed on overwatch as a garrison (interestingly garrisoning his blitz, in his deployment zone). All Inquisitorial forces started off-board in aircraft.

Turn 1:


The Guard won initiative, unsurprisingly putting their thunderbolts on CAP.
(1) One Deathwatch Thunderhawk swung round, strafing with superior turbolaser range the leman russ formation, destroying the hydra.
(2) The second Thunderhawk pulls the same trick on the hydra formation, destroying one and breaking the remainder. Deathshrieks move in to strafe the leman russ, blowing one away with lascannon fire. The russ marshal as a response.
(3) The Aquila bombers made a strafing run against the infantry company, and the Thunderbolts moved to intercept. The Thunderbolts shot down the Inquisitor Lord’s aircraft (there must be a heretic feeding the enemy information! Purges will be made after the battle!). My supreme commander went down in flames!
(4) The second Deathshriek formation activated, sweeping behind and blowing the thunderhawks effortlessly out of the sky.
(5) Both gun-cutters strafed the infantry co. with minimal impact, and picked up BM for exiting on his table edge.

Turn 2:



(1) A Thunderhawk strafed again against the hydra, taking a point of damage in return for a burning hydra.
(2) The mechanised guard infantry with the commander doubled forward along with the superheavies.
(3) and (4) The deathshrieks strafed the Bombards and the manticores, breaking the former but failing to hurt the latter. The Aquila failed to activate and stood down while the sentinels went on overwatch again. The rough riders trotted forward ahead of the mech infantry.
(5) A gun-cutter braved flak (taking a point of damage) and guns down two stands of riders, breaking the formation. The other gun-cutter stood down.
(6) Thunderhawk with librarian landed, assaulting the mech infantry in the open. The firefight destroyed three chimera with armour-piercing bolter rounds but massed autocannon fire blew up the thunderhawk and a Kill Team.

(7) Thanks to the commissar, the Marines broke and ran, hiding behind ruins.
(8) Russes road march and the aircraft disengage. The Marines rally (annoyingly, TSKNF actually hurts me here, leaving a BM where a normal formation would have had none!) and a deathshriek was shot down by hydra fire.

Turn 3



(1) The Deathwatch reassess the situation, and, confident that the previous outcome was a fluke, charged against the infantry co again. Due to some devious countercharging by Hena, 5 guard units fought against one Kill Team, but despite lighting the area up with tracer fire, no casualties were made. Thanks (again) to the Commissar – and that blasted blast marker, thanks very much TSKNF! – the Marines retreated again into woods. The guard company were unperturbed by the Space Marines’ guerrilla tactics.

At this point I made a horrible, horrible mistake. This wasn’t the first mistake of the game – I made many – but it was a real howler. I decided that to prevent the guard from covering the board with overwatch, I should try and keep the pressure on (which was dumb in and of itself, he couldn’t afford to do that as he needed to take objectives!), I also forgot about the -1 for retaining. Of course I rolled a “1â€Â

Overall, I just got totally outplayed. I made some silly mistakes and you made none. The desperation seeping in in the last turn was a sign of a bad player!   It was fun, though and nail-biting to the end.

1. I think that the Thunderhawk (and Landing Craft) should just be regular ones. I don't really see a reason why those should be changed. Never mind that 60cm range on Turbolaser is too much. These feel too much like

I'm still unsure about allowing 8 DW in a thunderhawk. And I don't want to drop sniper for the reason that it would make 8-strong formations overpowered from Thunderhawks when you can't have 8-strong formations as it is. It seems like an unnecessary change.

Here's what I would like to do. I'd like to make a Thunderhawk Destructor datafax that exactly matches the Forgeworld model. This is what I've been moving towards, might as well go the whole hog. So turbolaser, twin lascannon in addtion to the current loadout, but only 6 transport capacity. It fits the needs of the list perfectly and the desire for an upgunned/lower transport capacity Thunderhawk.

Given that you've done something very similar in your Scions list, I'd like for ours to be compatible. Now, given that yours has rockets or bombs, there are going to be differences, but at least we should touch base on the basic chassis: I.e., the current datafax with the battlecannon swapped with a turbolaser plus two lascannon.

If you want to go for a 45cm turbolaser that's okay with me. I just went with 60cm as that's the (errata'd) range for the turbolasers on titans, but since this is a single-barelled turbolaser and doesn't match the titan stats and is aircraft mounted, the 45cm is justified.

Use navy or the ones in Scions (and now Black Templar). IMO it's better to separate the two instead of making an amalgam unit.

I'd give them Expendable, which neatly represents the way they take hits for the inquisitor etc. The rerolls are clumsy, and I don't think Support Staff really justify a new special rule.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Hmm. I don't know, Support Staff aren't there to "take hits" for the inquisitor, they're there to ... support him. Either offensively or defensively. Inquisitorial retinues are supposed to be highly skilled, not grots whose lives are worthless. Expendable is also just swapping one special rule for another.

Do you really find re-rolls clumsy - have you tried it out in-game? There are plenty of things that allow re-rolls, in this game and others.

No, I've not tried it, but there are no other rerolls to hit in Epic, and the idea of keeping track of which bases have used their rerolls is just more trouble than it's worth, especially when combined with the slow-firing weapons on the warrior henchmen (which could also be changed to match the plasma cannon stats from the Minervan list (30cm AP5+ AT5+).

In 40k several of the "support" henchmen are indeed there to take hits for the inquisitor... However, if you really must give them a new special rule, make it one that's in effect all the time rather than needing to be tracked.

Something like...

"Though not armed with ranged weapons, support staff count always as having weapons in range for the purposes of suppression, and are always the first to be suppressed regardless of their position within the formation."

Or...

"The presence of support staff in a formation improves the armour save and ff values of all Inquisitors and Warrior Henchmen in the formation by 1. Note that this is not cumulative."

Or any number of other possibilities.

_________________
http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

I realise that the acolytes do take hits in 40K, although that one has never really made sense to me, acolytes are aspiring Inquisitors, not bodyguards.

That said, your ideas have some merit, and I've played with various forms of these in earlier editions of the list. The former is somewhat limited (why wouldn't you just want more Warriors that can be suppressed OR shoot?), the latter is a little fiddly - rather than having a statline that everyone understands, you have a formation with essentially two or more statlines for every unit - and there are four different units in the formation, not counting transports... See what I mean? It will make the list seem more gamey if their effective stats are different. But re-rolls, everyone gets re-rolls - there may or may not be any other re-rolls to hit, but there are plenty of other re-rolls.

Honestly, I'm not poo-pooing your ideas. I've just not come across something that works as well as the re-rolls. It gives the clear idea that the SS enhance the Inquisitor's abilities directly without mucking with the stats themselves. And you can just place a dice, or a marker, next to the unit, not really more difficult than marking BM.

I think it's just one of those things that looks like bookkeeping hassle but isn't so bad in real life. I'd like to play against an Inquisition army again, though, to see what it feels like on the other side of the table.

Because support staff are a lot cheaper

the latter is a little fiddly - rather than having a statline that everyone understands, you have a formation with essentially two or more statlines for every unit

_________________
http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Except that there are no modifers in assault, which is one thing I wanted to avoid.

The subject of modifers gets tricky. If you make them stack, then you can get 3+ or 2+ MW very easily. If, like you suggest, you don't allow modifiers to stack, then there's no real incentive to have more than 1, so that first 1 must be extra expensive - if you bump their cost up, then buying more than 1 becomes prohibitive to just buy them as back-ups, particularly for gun-cutters, which have limited capacity. If you have each stand give a separate ability (so the first stand gives +1 CC, the second gives +1 FF and the third gives +1 Save, etc), that gets complicated and confusing as hell for your opponent, who can't be expected to keep up with the ever-changing profile of your retinues.

Despite the horror of bookkeeping, re-rolls are easy. Everyone knows what they do, the don't change any stats and - in my experience, even playing total strangers at tournaments - noone's ever had a problem with the re-rolls. Hena has been the first person that hasn't liked it in practice as opposed to just theoryhammer.

Plus, to be honest, I've been playing with this list for about four years now (yikes!), and I like the way the retinues work. I really don't want to tear the list apart and start from scratch with testing. Which is not to say if you come up with a stonkingly amazing idea I'm immune to making changes - but I've tried it your way and I didn't like it.

Zombocom, with many of these things, you really need to hit the table and try stuff out. Theoryhammer gets you only so far - I've had dozens if not hundreds of games with the Inquisition lists. Playtest, batrep!

Sorry, but anything that requires markers to track each unit of infantry is just too much micromanagement at epic scale, hence why I'm also against the slow-firing plasma cannons on the warriors.