So I started looking at Centurion Assault squads.
My original intent was to increase the number of honour guard to ten and bring them and the Chapter master in a Land raider Redeemer wich has a transport capacity of 12. Maybe fit a master of the forge in there too with the Clan Raukaan Ironstone (so the Land raider will pass its IWND on 4+).
But now it's leaning towards 5 Assault Centurions, exchanging their ironclad assault launchers for hurricane bolters (for free). They'd have to take the Land raider crusader because it has a transport capacity of 16. Centurions being Very bulky thus one of them counts as three models. This leaves no room for the master of the forge though.
To break it down, in close combat a single honour guard has three attacks ws4 ap3 (if they use power swords). axes brings them to s5 ap2 but are unwieldy so they'd hit at initiative 1... So lets say they have power swords.
10 honour guard in other words have 30 attacks, 40 on the charge and a stunning 50 with the chapter banner. They are about 25 points cheaper with the banner than 5 Assault Centurions.
lets say they are attacking an opponent unit with ws4, t4.
with 30 attacks, about 15 hit (50/50 chance) and roughly half of those gets through. if the enemy has a 3+ save or worse they are toast. if they have 2+ and/or a higher toughness it will go downhill fast for the honour guard.
but 50 attacks ap3 is nothing short of crazy. though against tough opponents or opponents with 2+ armour it wound look as badass at the end of it all. if half of those attacks hit home, it's down to 25, and half of that again is around 12-13 wounds. if the enemy is toughness 4. even fewer wounds if they are toughness 5 or 6.
And lets be frank, whatever my finest warriors is up against won't be (shouldn't be) lowly cannon fodder. preferably they will be up against my opponents elite units and they will likely have either really good saves or high as hell stat lines. This is where I think Assault centurions will fare a bit better even though they don't even come close in the number of attacks. their attacks are reliable when they hit home, and only invulnerable saves can stop them.
The Centurions on the other hand only have two attacks each. one base and an extra because they have two siege drills. on the other hand these are s9, ap2 attacks (with armourbane so bye bye vehicles).
They also have toughness 5, the same save as an honour guard (2+) and two wounds each. so in total these two units have the same amount of wounds, but the Centurions are a bit more resilent due to t5.
5 Assault centurions have 10 attacks in total, 15 on the charge.
against the same enemy they'd hit with about half (ws4 vs ws4 here too). so 5 hits. strenght 9 hits though so anything t4 or less is insta-killed. and pretty much wounding everything else on a 2+ or 3+. meaning 4-5 wounds. These are ap2 so the enemy has to survive on having at least toughness 5 and/or an invuln save.
so, fewer wounds but more likely to get through. Another strength is that because they are two wounds each and a bit more durable, they won't lose as many attacks when they take unsaved wounds compared to the honour guard who will lose 3 base attacks per unsaved wound. So if lets say 3 honour guard fall the next round of combat will be more grim for them, because 3 wounds on the centurions is still only one model lost.
I'd also like to point out as an Iron hands player that the Centurion Sergeant gets IWND due to being a character, something that I think is easily missed! Also Centurions are a bit more likely to get to take their 6+ FNP due to higher toughness (not as much that can instant-death them), it's not much but it's something!
So, they honour guards put more wounds on enemy units? Not before the assault that's for sure (which might be good, but considering you're charging out of a land raider you can afford to get super-safe-to-charge-close). 10 honour guard on the charge means 10 bolt pistol shots. bs4 s4 ap5 shots. around 7 of these will hit, half of those will fail to wound against t4, most units will get to save against them.
Assault Centurions with hurricane bolters put out 3 shots each. 6 because they'll easily be in rapid fire range. that's 30 shots instead of 10. and they are twin linked so maybe about one will miss. lets say they all hit (with my rolling they won't), half of those will fail to wound, leaving around 15 wounds, instead of 3-4.
But that's not the end of that shooting. each Centurion have a twin-linked flamer as well (or a TL-meltagun if you so want) in the case of the flamers that should be a nice amount of hits, with rerolls to wound!
with meltaguns on all of them, being twin linked they should hit home, maybe missing at the most 1 or 2 shots. meltaguns being s8 is really good, and ap1. As we're expecting them to attack really hard as nails enemies that might be preferable.
The biggest danger here might be wiping the enemy unit in shooting, or whittling them down so you miss the charge, or kill them in one turn of combat, and that leaves you standing there for the enemy to shoot at them. But that last part should happen sooner or later anyway, and then you're better off being almost unscathed when it happens than emerging from a brutal melee. Plus if you finnish something off in one turn you can continue the rampage that much sooner!
Honour guard wins out in number of attacks in melee, but Centurions have quality here as well as whooping out a lot of shots before the assault and I think that evens it out quite a bit. 30 bolter shots, twin linked, that could fell quite a few enemies even if they have a 3+ save. The only drawback is slow and purposeful not allowing them to overwatch should the charge fail or another enemy unit charge them after they've dealt with the first one. Their move after a close combat should be to get back into the Land Raider until it's time for them to charge again.
Thoughts?
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar