Paladins at 1000 points

[Bean]

So, I'm building this Draigo/Paladin army with my wife: and it works reasonably well at 1500 points, and scales up just fine. But at 1000 points, the Paladin list seems dubious at best--the basic troop choice is 315 points, and the HQ is more than a quarter of the total. I wasn't sure i'd be able to build a list with paladins at this size, but, after consideration I came up with this:

275 : Draigo
330 : 5 Paladins (McPsycannon/Halberd, McPsycannon/Sword, McHammer/Stormbolter, Halberd/Stormbolter, Sword/Stormbolter)
205 : Storm Raven (Assault Cannon, Multi-melta)
55 : Paladin
135 : Dreadnought, 2x Tl Autocannons, Psybolt Ammunition
---
1000

This army revolves around a fairly simple premise: everyone gets in the Storm Raven except the one lone paladin, and everyone goes in reserve.

The Storm Raven deep-strikes, unloads everyone, and everyone shoots. Lone Paladin deepstrikes and does something useful (probably hides out near an objective).

It seems like a pretty reasonable alpha for a 1000 point list. The paladin/draigo unit is very tough except against a handful of units, which (hopefully) that first round of shots will neutralize before it has a chance to shoot (always getting to shoot first with virtually the whole army at pretty much any range I want is the big draw of this approach).

So, what are your thoughts?

[Splug]

I don't like the idea of deep striking a storm raven. Reserving is fine, but you can fly flat-out from your board edge 24" and be just about anywhere you would have felt safe to deep strike anyway... just with a free cover save, and no dice rolled. The raven still even gets to shoot once from PotM.

Other than that, it seems like about the best you're going to do trying to force paladins to work at lower point levels. Maybe running the paladins as over-modeled terminators would work better?

[Bean]

I don't like the idea of deep striking a storm raven. Reserving is fine, but you can fly flat-out from your board edge 24" and be just about anywhere you would have felt safe to deep strike anyway... just with a free cover save, and no dice rolled. The raven still even gets to shoot once from PotM.

Other than that, it seems like about the best you're going to do trying to force paladins to work at lower point levels. Maybe running the paladins as over-modeled terminators would work better?

That's a fair point, and 24" just about anywhere on half the board. On the other hand, its gets both guns if it deep strikes, and you're really trying to get particularly close, so it's like you're relying on particularly risky positioning.

Still, something to remember. Shame Grand Strategy can't give it scout--that would be pretty brilliant.

And yeah, I could certainly play them as terminators--honestly, my Paladins aren't particularly ornate anyway. I'd just like to stick with the paladin theme if I can. I figure a terminator list would look like this:

175 : Grand Master
230 : 5 Terminators (Psycannon/Halberd, Sword/Stormbolter, Halberd/Stormbolter x2, McHammer/stormbolter)
230 : 5 Terminators (Psycannon/Halberd, Sword/Stormbolter, Halberd/Stormbolter x2, McHammer/stormbolter)
230 : 5 Terminators (Psycannon/Halberd, Sword/Stormbolter, Halberd/Stormbolter x2, McHammer/stormbolter)
135 : Dreadnought (2x Tl Autocannons, Psybolt Ammunition)
1000 points

[DarkLink]

I would go with two full paladin squads instead of the storm raven. Long range str8+ with high ap isn't too common in this small of a game, so 10 paladins would be just as durable but have a higher damage output than 15 normal terminators.

Driago
2x5 Paladins, 2 Psycannons

That's 905pts, just enough for maybe a psycannon Inquisitor or something like that. You won't have a psyrifle dread, but your 5 psycannons make up for that at this level.

[Bean]

I would go with two full paladin squads instead of the storm raven. Long range str8+ with high ap isn't too common in this small of a game, so 10 paladins would be just as durable but have a higher damage output than 15 normal terminators.

Driago
2x5 Paladins, 2 Psycannons

That's 905pts, just enough for maybe a psycannon Inquisitor or something like that. You won't have a psyrifle dread, but your 5 psycannons make up for that at this level.

A reasonable suggestion, but there's just nothing I want to take at 95 points. I don't have a psycannon inquisitor, I don't really plan on building one, and there's just really nothing else to take at that price.

[Bean]

I don't like the idea of deep striking a storm raven. Reserving is fine, but you can fly flat-out from your board edge 24" and be just about anywhere you would have felt safe to deep strike anyway... just with a free cover save, and no dice rolled. The raven still even gets to shoot once from PotM.

Other than that, it seems like about the best you're going to do trying to force paladins to work at lower point levels. Maybe running the paladins as over-modeled terminators would work better?

I just figured out why flying on from the back edge isn't nearly as good as deepstriking: if the Raven moves 24", the guys can't disembark. That means that your first turn, moving in off the back, involves the Raven shooting one gun. Your first turn if you deep strike involves the Raven shooting two guns, the Paladins shooting their two master-crafted psycannons, and the Dreadnought shooting its two twin-linked, strength 8 autocannons. That's a lot of shots you're giving up to avoid a deep-strike which, since you've got at least 24" on all your guns, isn't all that risky anyway. Not a good trade.

[Splug]

I just figured out why flying on from the back edge isn't nearly as good as deepstriking: if the Raven moves 24", the guys can't disembark. That means that your first turn, moving in off the back, involves the Raven shooting one gun. Your first turn if you deep strike involves the Raven shooting two guns, the Paladins shooting their two master-crafted psycannons, and the Dreadnought shooting its two twin-linked, strength 8 autocannons. That's a lot of shots you're giving up to avoid a deep-strike which, since you've got at least 24" on all your guns, isn't all that risky anyway. Not a good trade.Shadow Skies allows you to disembark via deep strike after going flat out, actually - but that doesn't matter. The justification for sacrificing that round of shooting is to stay in the transport on a turn the paladins won't be able to assault anyway. Whether you do that by deep striking and not getting out or by flying 24" and not getting out is somewhat immaterial.

If your plan involves disembarking the turn you arrive, why pay 205 points for a transport? You don't need the 48" range dreadnought to get in close, and the paladins have terminator armor which allows them to deep strike anyway. If you get back in the stormraven after that turn, you skip a turn of infantry shooting the following turn anyway - and push back your timeline to launch an assault from the stormraven another turn.

[Bean]

Shadow Skies allows you to disembark via deep strike after going flat out, actually - but that doesn't matter. The justification for sacrificing that round of shooting is to stay in the transport on a turn the paladins won't be able to assault anyway. Whether you do that by deep striking and not getting out or by flying 24" and not getting out is somewhat immaterial.

If your plan involves disembarking the turn you arrive, why pay 205 points for a transport? You don't need the 48" range dreadnought to get in close, and the paladins have terminator armor which allows them to deep strike anyway. If you get back in the stormraven after that turn, you skip a turn of infantry shooting the following turn anyway - and push back your timeline to launch an assault from the stormraven another turn.

The Transport makes them all arrive from reserves together--an extremely important and valuable function, which is definitely worthy of its inclusion. Also, it allows the dreadnought to deepstrike, and come in at the same time as well.

With the storm raven, everything goes into reserve. you have one unit that doesn't matter (it's a one-man objective grabber) and one unit that is everything else. All of the army's firepower comes in on a single reserve roll. It all deepstrikes, then it all gets all of its shots. It's a guaranteed pre-emptive alpha strike--something no other build gets you.

Without the storm raven, putting anything into reserve is stupid--it divides up the army and gets it piece-mealed. With the storm raven, you can actually all-reserves your army in a highly effective manner--but moving in off the back changes that pre-emptive alpha strike into a single gun off the storm raven and the prayer that your Raven will survive the next round of shots--and the choice between the two is not difficult.

No, splug, you've pretty critically misevaluated this one. The Raven has significant value, and it lies in its ability to deepstrike. Even Shadow Skies doesn't even really come close to cutting it, since the accuracy of the placement of guys as well as the area into which the guys can deploy are both significantly reduced in comparison to the deepstrike-and-disembark approach (not to mention you're losing a gun off the Raven).

Nope. Your advice is bad. I appreciate that you took the time to chime in, but you've pretty clearly not thought this one through very well, and I have.

[Major Shultz]

175 : Grand Master
230 : 5 Terminators (Psycannon/Halberd, Sword/Stormbolter, Halberd/Stormbolter x2, McHammer/stormbolter)
230 : 5 Terminators (Psycannon/Halberd, Sword/Stormbolter, Halberd/Stormbolter x2, McHammer/stormbolter)
230 : 5 Terminators (Psycannon/Halberd, Sword/Stormbolter, Halberd/Stormbolter x2, McHammer/stormbolter)
135 : Dreadnought (2x Tl Autocannons, Psybolt Ammunition)
1000 points

Howdy!
I like it except I would use the 15 points for the MC on the Hammers, to buy grenades and or servo skulls for the GM. But it is still a good list.

[plawolf]

A reasonable suggestion, but there's just nothing I want to take at 95 points. I don't have a psycannon inquisitor, I don't really plan on building one, and there's just really nothing else to take at that price.

Xenos =I= in PA with conversion beamer comes in at 78pts, so you would also have spare points for a few servo skulls or the odd upgraded weapons for the paladins.

If you don't want to bother with the =I=, you could easily spend 95 points on things like a banner and apothecary upgrade, which might just be worth it in this case because of the small sized force and the fact you got nothing better to spend the points on.

Although personally, I think Draigo or Paladins are far too expensive even for 1500pts, combining the two is certainly not going to make it any better. Even a GM is very pricy at 1k.

If you want to use Paladins at 1k, you would be better of taking a cheap =I= as HQ. Either take a malleus =I= with PA and daemon weapon for extra choppy fun, or take a xenos one, again in PA with grenades to help out in CC, or take a conversion beamer and sit back to provide some long range AT.

So, as an example, you can have

HQ:
Xenos =I= with PA and rad grenades (48)

Troops:
-5 man GKT, psycannon (225)
-5 man GKT, psycannon (225)

Elite:
5 man paladin, 2 pycannons (315)

Heavy:
pyrifle dread (135)

That only comes to 948pts, leaving you 52 to play with, more than enough for some nice weapons upgrades for the squads. Can even make the =I= a psyker with a force weapon and hammerhand if you want.

Hell, since you have taken an =I=, you could even take a few hencemen. 45pts would get you 3 crusaders. Not a massive deal you might think, but they would actually work quite well as a human shield for one of your GKT squads with the 3++ saves.

Making the 5 men termie squads 10 men GKSS would actually save you 10 points. Enough for a 6th paladin, or a rhino for one of the GKSS and still have change left.

[Bean]

Xenos =I= in PA with conversion beamer comes in at 78pts, so you would also have spare points for a few servo skulls or the odd upgraded weapons for the paladins.

If you don't want to bother with the =I=, you could easily spend 95 points on things like a banner and apothecary upgrade, which might just be worth it in this case because of the small sized force and the fact you got nothing better to spend the points on.

Although personally, I think Draigo or Paladins are far too expensive even for 1500pts, combining the two is certainly not going to make it any better. Even a GM is very pricy at 1k.

If you want to use Paladins at 1k, you would be better of taking a cheap =I= as HQ. Either take a malleus =I= with PA and daemon weapon for extra choppy fun, or take a xenos one, again in PA with grenades to help out in CC, or take a conversion beamer and sit back to provide some long range AT.

So, as an example, you can have

HQ:
Xenos =I= with PA and rad grenades (48)

Troops:
-5 man GKT, psycannon (225)
-5 man GKT, psycannon (225)

Elite:
5 man paladin, 2 pycannons (315)

Heavy:
pyrifle dread (135)

That only comes to 948pts, leaving you 52 to play with, more than enough for some nice weapons upgrades for the squads. Can even make the =I= a psyker with a force weapon and hammerhand if you want.

Hell, since you have taken an =I=, you could even take a few hencemen. 45pts would get you 3 crusaders. Not a massive deal you might think, but they would actually work quite well as a human shield for one of your GKT squads with the 3++ saves.

Making the 5 men termie squads 10 men GKSS would actually save you 10 points. Enough for a 6th paladin, or a rhino for one of the GKSS and still have change left.

Reasonable advice, except that, again, I'm just not going to build an inquisitor (and I wouldn't play non-troop paladins, basically).

It's not terribly hard to make a good 1000 point terminator list--if I was looking for an alternative to paladins, I'd just do that. It'd basically be just as good as the list you've produced (I sketched it out, above). That's not the point. The point was to scale the paladin list down to 1000 points.

Also, we've played several games with Draigo and the paladins at 1500 points, and they actually do really well. They're a very solid troops choice, Draigo is well worth his cost, and it's easy enough to fit in support around the paladins that you can run a very effective paladin-as-troop list even as low as 1500 points. I've got theory and anecdote to support that position.

[Bean]

Howdy!
I like it except I would use the 15 points for the MC on the Hammers, to buy grenades and or servo skulls for the GM. But it is still a good list.

You may well be right. I have to admit that I just haven't gone through the rules for those fancy grenades as well as I should have. I know everyone seems to like them, and everyone is probably right on this one. I'll certainly take your suggestion under advisement.

[plawolf]

Well you can take a random marine to use as a PA =I= easily enough, you can buy one off someone in your gaming group or eBay for a next to nothing.

As for only wanting to play Paladins, well fair enough, I thought you just wanted to work Paladins into a decent 1k list. But if you only want to use Paladins, You need Draigo and at minimum two 5 men paladin squads. That's 825 points minimum. If you max out psycannons you got 95pts left to play with as already established, which isn't enough to get anything else other than an =I= (or bare bones techmarine, but he is pointless like that in your list so discounted) If you don't want to use one, then just get some upgrades for the Paladins. That's all the options the codex allows you, no-one can magic up some more points to allow you to take anything else.

If you were willing to give up a few psycannons, you could get a Psyrifle dread or a dreadknight (maybe even with a heavy incinerator, don't have my codex at hand so not sure if 175 is enough ottomh).

If you could work a dreadknight in as well, that might be quite interesting, as it would actually work quite well with the rest of the army as a fire magnet since the guns most effective against a dreadknight are also what you need to put down termies, and the dreadknight is too dangerous to be simply ignored, so it presents some target priority headaches for your opponent as well as give you a means of taking out heavy armour more easily. Although if you had the points, I would strongly suggest at least a hammer in each paladin squad as well.

Again, I don't have the codex, but if you can work in a psycannon and hammer in each paladin squad and still can take a dreadknight, even without any guns, it might be worth the loss of a pair of psycannons.

Maybe even consider putting both psycannons in one squad and both hammers in the other with Draigo, so you end up with two brutal cc units that can give anything in the game a good run for their money, and a pretty solid close fire support unit. The whole army would be a lot more choppy than Draigo and 10 paladins, and since you can afford to keep one squad out of cc to keep shooting, you may well find you get just as many if not more shots out of those two psycannons shooting all game as 4 psycannons shooting half the game and stuck in cc the rest of the time.

[Bean]

Well you can take a random marine to use as a PA =I= easily enough, you can buy one off someone in your gaming group or eBay for a next to nothing.

As for only wanting to play Paladins, well fair enough, I thought you just wanted to work Paladins into a decent 1k list. But if you only want to use Paladins, You need Draigo and at minimum two 5 men paladin squads. That's 825 points minimum. If you max out psycannons you got 95pts left to play with as already established, which isn't enough to get anything else other than an =I= (or bare bones techmarine, but he is pointless like that in your list so discounted) If you don't want to use one, then just get some upgrades for the Paladins. That's all the options the codex allows you, no-one can magic up some more points to allow you to take anything else.

If you were willing to give up a few psycannons, you could get a Psyrifle dread or a dreadknight (maybe even with a heavy incinerator, don't have my codex at hand so not sure if 175 is enough ottomh).

If you could work a dreadknight in as well, that might be quite interesting, as it would actually work quite well with the rest of the army as a fire magnet since the guns most effective against a dreadknight are also what you need to put down termies, and the dreadknight is too dangerous to be simply ignored, so it presents some target priority headaches for your opponent as well as give you a means of taking out heavy armour more easily. Although if you had the points, I would strongly suggest at least a hammer in each paladin squad as well.

Again, I don't have the codex, but if you can work in a psycannon and hammer in each paladin squad and still can take a dreadknight, even without any guns, it might be worth the loss of a pair of psycannons.

Maybe even consider putting both psycannons in one squad and both hammers in the other with Draigo, so you end up with two brutal cc units that can give anything in the game a good run for their money, and a pretty solid close fire support unit. The whole army would be a lot more choppy than Draigo and 10 paladins, and since you can afford to keep one squad out of cc to keep shooting, you may well find you get just as many if not more shots out of those two psycannons shooting all game as 4 psycannons shooting half the game and stuck in cc the rest of the time.

Again, reasonable, though this contains an error: you don't need ten paladins to have a legal ilst--you only need two. Did you actually read the list that I actually put up for review?

That said, thanks for the ideas on how to fill out the Draigo/two-big-squads style list.