Haemonculus Covens

[Cortland]

Saw a pretty similar list being run this week at my LGS here in Hawaii. I ended up watching most of the game since I didn't have an game scheduled. What I realized rings very true. The units when they get to their designed task preform exceptionally well. However this player struggled immensely against flyers as well. Dual flyrant was just to much to deal with.

[Lord Hanaur]

That's pretty interesting.  Playing againt Dual Flyrants must have ben a ton o fun.  Lol.  Though if they get grounded or alight for some reason, it's pretty much on like Donkey Kong.

 

Overall Flyers and FMC's are always and will ever be a problem.  They are very powerful units in their own rights, and while one can say all day long that AV 12, for example, is manageable, that assumes a lot in that statement; and it's usually just a glittering generality because on average rolling it takes a bit of commitment to take those babies down without skyfire.

 

One sad truth here is that Dark Eldar have one means of anti-air that's any kind of effective, so you either commit heavily to it or you accept that weakness and fight the way I had to:  staying mega frosty and mobile.

 

The Talos units can be replaced pretty handily by three Void Raven Bombers, if I wanted an anti-air presence.  I was trying for an actual Coven list though.  The task at hand is to see if a Coven force can handle even this much of a mismatch, and it did it's job admirably despite allowing his flying tanks to fire for seven rounds into me unabated.  Which did hurt, by the way.

 

Still I could bring that air force with me in place of Talos if it wasn't a pure Coven list I was going for.  Maybe I'll try that next once this experiment has played out..

 

I cant know this for SURE, but I do think that people like it more when opponents actually play their codex.  I think its fun for people to see what a TRUE Coven list will do without all the outside alliance stuff.  We can add that stuff in later as we want to but its kinda neat to see the Coven on display.

[Lord Hanaur]

Well I had another good game with the Coven.  this time I faced a Khorne Dog army with some Blood Crushers and a pair of Soul Grinders, Nurglings, Daemonettes and plague bearers, a few Khorne Heralds.

 

His army was pretty much a smash mouth army like mine with the Soul Grinders and Warp Storm as his source of shooting. 

 

I deployed just the Talos.  I seized after Scouting forward.

 

The game as one would expect quickly became a matter of him rushing my lines after the reserves showed up and my Talos Rushing him.  The interesting part of the battle, aside from atrocious dice rolls I was cursed with, were two things.

 

First, the Liquifiers were highly useful in this game for while they were only STR 3, they did a cumulatively high amount of damage both in overwatch and in shooting

 

The second was those darn Soul Grinders are annoying.  Lol.  The Talos rolled like crap so that was part of it too, but man it took FOREVER to kill those things and because i multi charged his Khorne dogs, I was forced by base contact to split my attacks quite a bit, and the dice gawds made it real slow going milling through his puppies.  I never did lose a single Talos. which made the milling process all the more frustrating! 

 

However the real cool take away was that Daemonic instability is a real bitch when its being affected by the Freakish Spectacle rules.  That rule was giving me three extra wounds a turn at times.

 

His force lacked the normal Psyker presence that would have made the army more formidable but even without the help, that force was able to clog me up.  in the end he managed to tie me on First Blood, though the only thing left in his army were his Plague Bearers, and 2 Nurglings.  Everything else perished.

ANY objective secured at all in my Coven force would have made it a complete victory.  But it ended as a 4-4 tie.  Emperors Will.  That mission often ends in ties (which is fine).

 

I lost two Raiders (one at the very very end to seal the tie) and two Wrack units.  Nothing else died.  So Even though the battle was decidedly one sided, dice and a lack of Objective Secured made an actual win impossible.

 

So the crowds went wild as they watched the blood orgy we provided them, but those crazy Chaos Daemons held on for the tie.  Oh for the days of making Wracks into Troops choices.  =)

[Lord Hanaur]

D'oh.  Finally took a loss.  I suppose it was inevitable.  The forces of the Blood Angels were able to once more mock me with their aircraft and this time, they took out the Talos with Mephiston.  I have always hated that dude.  At least now he's easier to kill.

 

We played Maelstrom again and I ended up with no points in the first two rounds (AGAIN!).  I Finally scored one point in the third round, so you can imagine that I was quite behind, having gone second.  I should have chucked a card in the first two rounds which was my mistake, I just forgot I could do it.  The Raiders had very bad luck and were killed on the first try in most cases, because they apparently did not want to jink, and his dice apparently enjoyed explosions.  what can ya' do!  They are Storm Ravens after all.  Darn good birds.

 

Even with the dice seemingly not on my side, It was potentially closer than the score showed.  I drew and scored a couple of D3 cards at the end, but both of them ended up being 1's.  It was 4-9 at the end.  I had Line Breaker, and he has First Blood plus Line Breaker.  I had my chances to come back.  Chalk one up for the Imperium.

 

His units were no match for mine, by and large, and they melted like butter before me.  I just made a few key mistakes that I just couldn't overcome IN TIME.  Game went six rounds.

 

Again, not being able to harm his hovering Storm Ravens was a really big deal.  One Grotesque unit spent the majority of the game doing nothing but running around the board to try and be relevant.  Given that, I felt pretty good about how i did overall.  An Aegis is the only thing I can take that won't ruin the Coven theme and still give me some anti-air.  I suppose I could try it.  

 

To make the list more competitive against aerial spam would be to include a couple of bombers, possible three.  Three of them would scare the crap out of a lot of forces, but then it wouldn't be a true Coven list anymore.  =(

[fluger]

Theme vs Potency is always going to be a thing.  

[Lord Hanaur]

Theme vs Potency is always going to be a thing.  

Theme or no theme, if you cannot stop not one but three Storm Ravens all game long, its always going to look bad.  Lots of non themed lists have the same problem and I have managed even despite that as you saw in the previous game.

 

That being said, in THIS case I am completely vulnerable to Psykers and to flyers.  Those are two major issues I give a lot of ground on, so needless to say I am aware of it.  coping with that is a part of the challenge.  =)  If I win despite that it's a supreme victory!  If i lose it's my own darn fault.

 

I am thinking an Aegis gun would probably be the next logical "add" to this list.  Even just one gun that gets a shot at glory and also is then is a target to take some pressure off the Talos would be cool.  I think I could get some mileage out of a LasCannon that hits on 2's.  At worst, i force a an extra Jink per round so that incoming fire isn't as harsh.  Food for thought.

 

It seems at this time that my only real nemesis is flyers and Psykers.  Cant do anything about the Psykers but I CAN do something about flyers. 

[fluger]

Might I suggest the Icarus Quad Lascannon turrets?  Two for 150 pts is a stellar AA buy.  It's more pricey than a Aegis, but it covers two fire arcs and is VERY tough to get rid of.  

[Guest]

Might I suggest the Icarus Quad Lascannon turrets?  Two for 150 pts is a stellar AA buy.  It's more pricey than a Aegis, but it covers two fire arcs and is VERY tough to get rid of.  

Back up a step. He's not using a detachment with fortification access. List would need detachment changes to incorporate any fortifications.

[fluger]

Wow, good point, that's a REAL drawback of the coven list then (though perfectly fluffy!).  Yeah, so no aegis or anything for you, LH!  

[Lord Hanaur]

oofta.  What to do...What to do...  I mean its only one loss and like 6 wins so we arent talking about a list thats epically failing.  We're talking about its obvious exposure to this matchup issue its got. 

 

Three Bombers would solve a lot but it denies the identity of COVEN by doing so.  Maybe I will come up with a colossally brilliant fix to this.  Just gotta figure out what it will be.

[Lord Hanaur]

I made some executive decisions.

 

as aforementioned when i was talking with Paxmiles and company I had already been considering the move to Dark Lances on Raiders.  Finally did it.  I now have a way to discourage the Storm Ravens from Hovering and laughing at me while they shoot freely for six or seven turns.

 

Also I made Scissorhands the Weapon of choice for its poisoned rending which helps my units now be able to whack on Armor Values of 12 in melee, which I was lacking.  

 

I also buffed my Torpedo of a Warlord so he survives better and makes life uncomfortable in challenges.  I also corrected his points cost.  For some reason it was typed wrong.  I fixed it.

 

Lastly I gave the back three Talos some toys:  Two of them can now cause Instant Death on 6's and Fleshbane for the rare times it matters.  One of them gets Shred.

 

Accothysts had to sacrifice their Flesh Gauntlet, but that was okay.

 

 

 

Grotesquerie (Freakish Spectacles)

 

140pts Urien Rakarth

 

210pts 5 Grotesques (Aberration W/ Scissorhand, Liquifier Gun)

65pts   Raider (Aethersails, Dark Lance)

 

175pts 4 Grotesques (Aberration W/ Scissorhand, Liquifier Gun)

65pts   Raider (Aethersails, Dark Lance)

 

Corpsethief Claw Detachment  (Freakish Spectacle, and Scout Special Rules)

675pts 5 Talos (Feel No Pain, TL Haywire Blaster, 1 x Chain Flail, 2 x Ichor Injectors)

 

Covenite FleshCorps (Freakish Spectacle, Master of Flesh)

 

145pts Haemonculus (Liquifier, Scissorhand, Syndriq's Sump, The Khaidesi Haemovores, The Panacea Perverted, The Vexator Mask)

 

110pts 7 Wracks (Acothyst w Liquifier, 1 x Liquifier)

65pts   Raider (Aethersails, Dark Lance)

 

110pts 7 Wracks (Acothyst w Liquifier, 1 x Liquifier)

65pts   Raider (Aethersails, Dark Lance)

 

110pts 7 Wracks (Acothyst w Liquifier, 1 x Liquifier)

65pts   Raider (Aethersails, Dark lance)

 

2000 Points

[fluger]

Yeah, I really think scissorhands are critical for grotesques.  It gives you your only chance of a prayer against something like say 5 knights.  

[Lord Hanaur]

Im fortunate that no one in Olympia is that beardy.  I mean there might actually be someone that I don't know about that fields that, but they haven't shown up to any tournaments, though I have seen THREE once.

 

As aforementioned, its a totally true to theme list.  I am hopeful that the changes here will change the way the Blood angles have to play against it just enough to keep me in the win column.  

 

I'm 2-1 against the new Blood angels and now I'll be interested to see how this alters the way they approach me.

 

another problem was Dreadnoughts.  the Lances will really help with that part of the equation.

[pretre]

Did you just call evil_bryan beardy?

[Aventine]

Five Knights is just what an 1850 Imperial Knight list is; what's beardy about fielding 1850 from your Codex the only possible way you can?

[fluger]

It's very fluffy. 

[Lord Hanaur]

I don't think fluffy is the issue.

 

So tonight I got to fight an ENTIRELY different flavor of Blood Angels.  This time he had Astorath AND Dante leading a Blood Angels Death Company of 15 dudes, right up the gut in a hammer and anvil game.  We got the Relic mission and he split his Lascannon predators to either side with a Rhino in front of them to "open and close" the shutter on his Reticle so to speak.  Inside the Rhinos were Flamertastic 10 man Tactical Squads.  Deep Striking would be three units of 5 Assault Marines with dual Meltas and the Sanguinary Guard eventually alighted in my backfield  to try and hit a straggler Raider I left for just such a lure.

 

I deployed the Talos dead center with the Raiders in a corner way behind them to avoid one of the two Predators.

 

IN the end the incredible power of Astorath and Dante fueled the Death Company through the Talos in a couple of rounds.  This gave my speed time to arrive and I cordoned off the Relic.

 

He dropped in with everything and gave my Raiders hell but only finished off two of them.  I was able to assault the Assault squads and the Marines that got out of the Rhinos in a scrum that unfortunately started in round 2 and lasted all the way through my round 4.  FIVE assault phases just to kill those small squads he had!!!  I literally couldnt roll my way out of a wet paperbag.  It was HIS turn five and the Death Company and Predator had combined by then to essentially kill all the Raiders and mire me in MORE close combat.  I finally let Urien come out of his Raider and play a little but the scrum in the middle persisted and I just could not kill the troops with my dice going colder than cold.  He hit and Runned a couple times out to be able to reactivate his Chaplain rerolls and whalloped me whlle my return attacks were so pathetic that I was going to concede in round 4, honestly.  It was bad enough to do it as he had first blood, line breaker and had slayed my warlord plus could contest the Relic which is now just a contestable package aparently.  Writing was on the wall.

 

We continued on anyways and as we rounded into turn 6 and 7, the board looked pretty sparse.  At the end of the game he had two Rhinos, two predators alive, 1 Death Company fellow I think survived the carnage.  Dante was one wound away from Death and had made several saves in the final rounds that could have ended him.  Astorath was wounded also.  So we were both in tatters.  On the last round my heroic Wrack got nailed in the face and had to make a save or I would be tabled.  the dice tumbled across the table and it was a FIVE!  Woo hoo.  Victorious Feel Ne Pain!  One wrack lived to tell the tale.

 

As it was the game was a veritable slaughter but the Grotesques just could not finish the job no matter how many dice we rolled.  There were just 4 Marines left to kill in round 2 on my left side and we couldn't do it, phase after phase.  It tied me up for five phases essentially, making it impossible to bring their full brutality to bear.

 

Hit and run was a big big help to the Blood Angels.  Its a game changer when you can get that charge bonus to INIT and re-rolling to hit etc...  It made the unit butch enough to even take the Talos apart.

 

I was kind of laughing because of course, the first time I try the list without the Agonizers and without disintegrators, what do I see?  yup.  big old Infantry company.

 

Agony!

 

On the plus side it was decided by Secondaries so I had that going for me in any event.  A shame the Talos couldnt kill a unit in melee, because those extra VP's are nice.

[fluger]

Typically I would imagine this list wouldn't have an issue with infantry, seems one of the things in this army's wheelhouse, so the lances still seem like a smart buy.  

[Lord Hanaur]

This was an incredibly atypical game.  Like i said, couldnt roll to save my life.  The Grotesques were killing like one guy a round for five phases, with Rampage in some cases.  It was that bad.  The list of dice rolling indignities in this game made me want to cry.

 

I was quite pleased when I saw all those infantry.  =) ...and...then....

 

Oh on a side note, the Freakish Spectacle rule came in handy a couple times.

[Guest]

Im fortunate that no one in Olympia is that beardy.  I mean there might actually be someone that I don't know about that fields that, but they haven't shown up to any tournaments, though I have seen THREE once.

Local guy brought 3 at the 1250pt level. He plans to buy another two...

 

Personally, I'm really not sure how I would handle the knights either. That codex reeks of apocalypse, yet you can't bring any proper apocalypse solutions against it in normal play. I suppose I should stop bringing fun units....

[Lord Hanaur]

Agreed Paxmiles.  it's an apocalypse type thing.  I share that opinion, but like every other opinion, take it with salt I guess.

 

 

Got another game in tonight.  VERY interesting match up.  This time against Tau Empire and this time it was more or less this:

 

 

2 Broadsides (2 w High Yield)

 

3 Broadsides (1 with High Yield)

 

2 x Commanders (buffers, but armed with meltas)

 

4 x 9 Fire Warriors (Photon)

 

2 x 3 Crisis teams (armed for every occassion pretty much!  extremely varied weapons load out)

 

1 Riptide (Ion)

 

2 x Razorshark Strike Fighters

 

 

Now I have praised Tau airpower before in this link albeit I have only seen it againt one General.  So I was EXTREMELY pleased to see that my opponent had included TWO of them in his force. 

 

 

Something ate half this post so Ill just summarize and say it went to turn seven and all that was left of either army was his lone Razorshark which had done plenty of damage, and a lone Crisis Suit.  On my end I had my wounded Talos unit remaining, plus an immobilized Raider.  BLODDY!

 

 

I won if 8-2

 

 

The mission was very close and he led actually in round 6 by a hair.  His two planes did a lot of damage, that was for sure and his Supporting Fire was a real nasty kick to the groin.  

 

 

The mission we played was called The Reaper, wherein there are no objective markers to start.  Each dead unit of the Covens enemies becomes a three point gruesome objective made of parts for the Dark Eldar to harvest up and experiment with.  Naturally you want to stop them from doing it and score points for the ones you control and stop Covenites from taking!  Love the mission.  It uses Vanguard deployment, FYI.

 

 

The MVP has to be the lone Grotesque taking down the Riptide when it charged me.  That was cool.  The Talos unit didn't enter play until turn 4, thanks to his Warlord Trait, but there ended up being seven turns so it got to kill four units and saved the day for me, because I was basically tied or losing in most of the rounds.  It seemed like as soon as I killed one of the enemy, the enemy was instantly sitting in those points!

 

 

In the end I had to clear them off to take my prizes, and I did.

 

 

My Least valuable player was Urien.  He kinda chumped out and got himself shot to death.

 

 

The Dark Lances played a notably important role in rendering his Broadside firepower down fast, since I really only had one turn to try before explosions, terrain and movement made such luxuries as shooting a real commodity.  One Dark Lance took out a Fighter.  That was a shot in the dark but it was cool.

[Guest]

Glad you took the advice regarding the singular AT option. Looks like the list is doing better. Interested to see how it does in the future.

[Lord Hanaur]

Well the Triple Raven build gave me little choice.  Lol.  And it's foolish not to take good advice.  So Lance's it is.  Maybe not in normal lists but the Coven need it bad.

[Lord Hanaur]

I got my first encounter in with the Coven against the new and improved Necrons.  The Living Tomb was  accompanied by 4 Crypteks and 65 Necron Warriors.

 

I started with the Corpsethief claw in a corner behind a big hill.  His Necrons crept up into position to hold objectives.  

 

IN round 2, the Obelisk dropped and with it a Monolith.  From the Monolith spilled 17 Necron Warriors and 12 more Necron Warriors, blasting and killing two of the 5 Talos and the Monolith bombing them.  At bottom of two I brought on all the Wrack s and their Raiders but they did nothing and to top it all off I missed my charge, leaving my Talos in the wind again and with no kills to show for it!

 

Round 3 he blasted me again and killed another Talos, leaving me just two, while his Obelisk and now third Monolith took up a lot of space in the middle and started downing a Raider forcing my Warlord to reembark on a different one.    The Necron shooting was copious.  At bottom of three, my Warlord retreated into another Raider

.

Meanwhile the Grotesques and their rides screamed up the right sideline and readied themselves for war!  It was turn three though and we really managed just one Glance on one Monolith at this point and almost all his Necrons still alive.  My Talos charged the offending warriors they were chasing and did some damage making them flee but Reanimation Protocols were working well for him.

 

Round 4 the Necrons who were running from the Talos on the far left used the Veil of Darkness to slam themselves dead bang onto the objective on the far right of the field.  Deft stroke, denying me Victory Points from my Corpsethief Claw ability.  Most of the Necron force was on that right side at this point.  Monoliths kept bombing and wounded the Talos again, the other Monolith and Necrons trying to pop the Grotesques outta their shells before they got a chance to get loose, but the Raiders held up to the damage other than immobilizing one near the Monolith on the left, leaving me two that were mobile.

 

Bottom of 4, the flood gates opened as both Grotesque units muti-charged from their Raiders, locking up FOUR Necron units!  Rampage more than made up for the loss of the charge attack.  The Necrons and Haemonculus Covens were very hearty and so this was going to take a little while to resolve.  Good news is that the Haywire and the Lances, now free to re-position, loaded the near monolith with shots and took three Hull Points from it.

 

Top of Round 5 was furious combat as I flailed and could barely manage to kill three Necron Warriors with my best unit!  I finally broke one unit but not the other three.  My immobilized Raider just squatted on an objective the Monolith was contesting.  At this stage I actually controlled 1 objective on the right side and he had two, one in the middle which my Grotesques were fighting to tie.  Secondaries were tied also.  His Veil of Darkness unit gave him control of his second objective (Obsec for the win).  So on my turn I had to kill that Veil unit and threw all the Wracks I could at it using Liquifiers and poisoned weapons to chop it down to just the Cryptel and two Crons.  the unit of Grotesques that was freed up tried to charge but failed.

 

So round 6 was all about extinguishing the remaining Cryptek and his soldiers from where he had teleported to.  His Monolith and Obelisk could deny my force their 2 objectives which meant the fight came down to whether or not that Veil unit could be killed.  The melee's continued and the Grotesques tore up yet more Necrons and finally killed the last resistance in the middle but the Obelisk stopped them from scoring.

At bottom of six, the Wracks and the Grotesques tore the Veil unit apart and with that, i now had two objectives.  Then the Talos and the lone Raider to the left shot and killed the Monolith there which gave us three objectives.

 

Final Score was 11-2.Had he used his Veil a round sooner, it might have been a closer score and obviously hindsight is 20/20.

[Guest]

You know, in your battle reports, I always get the feeling you are the underdog. That said, that talos unit is a nasty deathstar...dunno<scratches head>...seems like you're not the underdog with this army.

 

Anyway, enjoyable battle report. I especially enjoyed hearing that obelisk got fielded. It is by far one of the most underrated necron units.