Evaluate 3 [1000pt] Draigo Wings

[BFTrick]

Hello there,

Let me know your thoughts about the strengths and weaknesses of each of these lists and which one you would use. These lists are for a team tourney where I only have 1/2 the force org and I only need 1 troop. My partner will also be playing a GK list.

List 1

Draigo

5 pallys
-2 psycannons
-apothecary

5 termies

Dreadnought
-autocannons
-psybolt ammo

List 2

Draigo

5 Paladins
-2 psycannons
-apothecary
-brotherhood banner
-warding stave

Vindicare

Dreadnought
-autocannons
-psybolt ammo

List 3

Draigo

5 Paladins
-2 master crafted psycannons

4 Paladins
-psybolts
-one master crafted daemon hammer
-nemesis warding stave

Dreadnought
-autocannons
-psybolt ammo

[plawolf]

Apothecaries are all but pointless with Draigo and Paladins.

Since you are playing doubles, it would help to know what sort of list your partner is bring.

In all honesty, I think Draigo-wing is too expensive to play below 2k. But if you insist on it, I think the first list is the strongest.

Drop the Apoth saves you 75pts. That will net you a psycannon on the termie squad leaving you with 50pts.

You can master craft one your psycannons and get a banner for your paladins will cost you 30pts, leaving you enough to get psybolt ammo for one of thr squads.

[Angelofblades]

List 2 is illegal?

Last I checked, you need 2 troops and 1 HQ. Vindicare is an elites?

Maybe draigo wing doesn't work at 1000pts points, since it's mostly Draigo and not enough wing?

[DarkLink]

Driagowing kinda sorta works at 1000pts, as the enemy doesn't have a lot that can deal with Paladins but you also don't have a lot of points to actually buy Paladins.


List 2 is illegal. Both other lists have unnecessary wargear (Stave, Apothecary, Psybolt Ammo) that should be spent on more bodies. Incidentally, the Apothecary upgrade is not worth it. Ever. I play Paladins a lot, and I don't think I've so much as lost a whole model to small arms fire. It's always attrition from plasma, melta, lascannons and the like that kill Paladins. Or Power Fists/Rending Genestealers in CC. Either way, the Apothecary upgrade is absurdly expensive and does absolutely nothing to prevent those deaths.


Anyways, you can't fit 2 Paladin squads with psycannons and a Dreadnought in the same list, so I would go with a Paladin squad as your main unit, backed up by a 5-6 man Terminator unit with a psycannon, plus the Dreadnought.

Driago
5 Paladins, 2 MC Psycannons
6 Terminators, Psycannon
Psyrifle Dread

10 pts left over after buying the minimum upgrades, so that goes to master crafting the psycannons since there isn't really anything else to spend it on.

[BFTrick]

List 2 is illegal.

I did say in the first post that I only need one troop for this tourney.


Both other lists have unnecessary wargear (Stave, Apothecary, Psybolt Ammo) that should be spent on more bodies. Incidentally, the Apothecary upgrade is not worth it. Ever. I play Paladins a lot, and I don't think I've so much as lost a whole model to small arms fire. It's always attrition from plasma, melta, lascannons and the like that kill Paladins. Or Power Fists/Rending Genestealers in CC. Either way, the Apothecary upgrade is absurdly expensive and does absolutely nothing to prevent those deaths.

Without play testing I can see why you say the apothecary upgrade is worthless. I am inclined to agree and I'll try a couple games without.

I didn't believe your statement about psybolts until I ran the numbers. I thought shooting at a horde of Orks with 10 str 5 shots would be better than 12 str 4 shots but you only get an extra .4 wounds (4.4 wounds vs 4.0 wounds). The difference when shooting at Space Marines is even less impressive (1.48 vs 1.33).

psybolts = removed

The only item I'm still thinking about is the warding stave. I do like the ability to put powerfist wounds on this guy. When I run the numbers it looks like unless you roll spectacularly you'll almost always have a powerfist left to thump a pally.


Anyways, you can't fit 2 Paladin squads with psycannons and a Dreadnought in the same list, so I would go with a Paladin squad as your main unit, backed up by a 5-6 man Terminator unit with a psycannon, plus the Dreadnought.

Driago
5 Paladins, 2 MC Psycannons
6 Terminators, Psycannon
Psyrifle Dread

This looks great! I think this will be my list 4. I think I'll go with this list if I decide against the warding stave.

[Denied]

Apothecaries are all but pointless with Draigo and Paladins.


I completely disagree. When playing Draigo Wing against a high rate of fire army like DE Venom Spam you will be loving the FNP.

In this situation though the Apothecary is wasted since its only 1K pts. Honestly Draigo Wing at anything below 1500pts is kind of fail all over the place though.

I would say keep them as just Terminators with a GKGM. You get more bodies this way at least, which allows for you to canvas a bigger area with troops.

[blackarmchair]

I agree with Denied, FnP is awesome on Draigowing especially at 1000pts. When you're rocking Paladins in the double digits you can afford to lose a few to bad die rolls, but in a list like this when you've only got 5 or 6 FnP means a lot.

[DarkLink]

I've curbstomped DE every single time I've played them, and I've played a variety of lists from venom spam to WWP assault lists. And despite all the lance weapons and weight of fire, I've never lost more than a handful of troops scattered across a couple squads.

Anyways, I stand by my statement about Apothecaries. They are a waste of points. I have never, ever been in a position where FNP would have changed the course of a game. Every single time that I have lost my Paladins, it is without fail the result of high AP/high Str/power weapons that would ignore FNP anyways. And this is mostly experience against a variety of tournament lists, since I don't have a local club to play casual games at where I'm living.

Besides, there will never be a situation where I would rather buy an Apothecary over a Razorback or half of a Psyrifle Dread.


I did say in the first post that I only need one troop for this tourney.

Ok, I missed that. I'd still go with more bodies, since a Vindicare is pretty fragile. A single round of bolter fire from, say, a tactical squad is easily enough to kill a Vindicare.




psybolts = removed

Psybolts are pretty sweet on a full squad with 8 Storm Bolters (and 2 psycannons). On fewer storm bolters than that, they start to become a bit of a point sink. Since I basically always take max squads of 10, I take psybolts if I have leftover points on GKSS/Terminators, but not on full Paladins since there are only 6 storm bolters. I don't always find the points for psybolts, though. They're a nice boost, but not vital to your strategy.

[doom-kitten]

I have to agree with the more bodies here, I've played this kind of tourney before and was teamed up with salamanders. Knowing your buddies list helps big time as he or she can often cover something better than you can, in this case as your both GK I'd say numbers is key. I recently took on GK at 1000 pts with DE and the game was a joke, my opponent did not have the numbers to achieve the objective and couldn't coup with the number of units assialing him and my archon alone wasted half his army and was still alive, on a side not that shadow field is insane, to be honest termies or pally's don't really concern me so I may be biaised here, I do have the weight of Exorcists to deal with them after all. I played the partner tourney with my SoB's and me and my partner both inevitably took two troops incase of objective based missions. I ended up being the attack formation while he took the role of offense, we ended with 3rd place a team of orks won the tourney but it was very fun.

[Denied]

I've curbstomped DE every single time I've played them, and I've played a variety of lists from venom spam to WWP assault lists. And despite all the lance weapons and weight of fire, I've never lost more than a handful of troops scattered across a couple squads.

Anyways, I stand by my statement about Apothecaries. They are a waste of points. I have never, ever been in a position where FNP would have changed the course of a game. Every single time that I have lost my Paladins, it is without fail the result of high AP/high Str/power weapons that would ignore FNP anyways. And this is mostly experience against a variety of tournament lists, since I don't have a local club to play casual games at where I'm living.


DarkLink you have to remember this isn't just about personal experience this is a numbers game and no matter what eventually shots will get through. When facing against a high rate of fire army like DE, IG, certain Eldar builds, strangely even Tau... yeah I said Tau; you will run into the problem that they can shoot you enough that you WILL fail 2+ armor saves and you will start loosing models. Honestly on average you WILL fail 1 in 6 armor save With a lot of the armies I just listed you will be making per turn somewhere around 20+ armor saves you will be losing a full base a turn in this fashion (this is not including Instant Death) with FNP you can reduce the number of wounds you take per turn by half.... that's a lot and well worth the apothecary at a mere 75pts.

If we want to pull personal experience into it I play a lot of games and go to a lot of tournaments and I have seen the difference FNP in Draigo wing can make especially against a very competent DE venom spam list.





Besides, there will never be a situation where I would rather buy an Apothecary over a Razorback or half of a Psyrifle Dread.


I would too, but that's why I play purifier spam with mass Psybacks. I think in this situation I is essential.



Ok, I missed that. I'd still go with more bodies, since a Vindicare is pretty fragile. A single round of bolter fire from, say, a tactical squad is easily enough to kill a Vindicare.

I laugh every time a see a Vindicare on the table. They are a joke and anyone running on in there list is wasting points. Grab a freaking Psyfile Dread and save 10pts in the process.





Psybolts are pretty sweet on a full squad with 8 Storm Bolters (and 2 psycannons). On fewer storm bolters than that, they start to become a bit of a point sink. Since I basically always take max squads of 10, I take psybolts if I have leftover points on GKSS/Terminators, but not on full Paladins since there are only 6 storm bolters. I don't always find the points for psybolts, though. They're a nice boost, but not vital to your strategy.

Yeah Psbolt points can be used in so many better spots, namely with a warding stave imo. everyone has that nob with a power fist or that lone IG with a power fist story and how he kills like 3 models. This is even worse when those three models cost something like 200+pts and that lone dude was like 20pts.

[thecactusman17]

Vindicaires are the best armor killing units in the game, with an average penetrating roll of 15. If you are shooting at infantry, there's typically a reason. Also, they are difficult to kill without devoting something that could better be used elsewhere to do it.

At 1000 points, I would take a single Paladin squad max, then maybe smaller squads that give you more bodies. Try, for example, 1 5 man Paladin squad, then 2-3 regular minimum Strike Squads with psycannons deepstriking down into cover.

[DarkLink]

DarkLink you have to remember this isn't just about personal experience this is a numbers game and no matter what eventually shots will get through.

It's not that I'm sitting here laughing at DE or anything for being pathetic, it's just that I've crushed them so effortlessly when I've played them that I'm genuinely puzzled at what DE can do to face the sort of lists that I take. And it's not like the people I played are pushovers, either, or that they made big mistakes that cost them the game.

Anyways, my experience has been that venoms get about one, maybe two turns of shooting before I mow down so many of them that their firepower becomes negligible. And in the turns that they do shoot, they usually don't shoot the Terminators/Paladins because some of my other units are more threatening. The Paladins are a rock that the DE can kinda avoid, they just have to soak up a couple psycannons each turn from them. The rest of my army, however, is much more vulnerable, and so they try and do as much damage there. Killing off GKSS units is easier to do than killing Paladins, so those are the units that take the most casualties. But still, I've always killed off the DE units so quickly that the game was never even a real contest. After turn 3 it's usually just mopping up for me.

Maybe it's the units I take, maybe it's how I maneuver and deploy, but against all the weight of fire armies I've played (that includes IG, in particular a list with 9 hydra and 3 vendetta) it's always lascannons, dark lances and power fists that kill Paladins. I might lose a couple wounds to failed armor saves, but never even close to enough to justify the Apothecary upgrade.


I also like the article her (http://www.3plusplus.net/2011/09/fallacy-40k-win-more-fallacy.html)e that talks about stuff like this. You keep pouring more and more points into a single unit, for which you get diminishing returns because the unit is already so tough/killy that you could get by pretty well without said upgrade. Better to spend those points on other units so you don't have all your eggs in one basket, since your unit can already do its job just fine.



I would too, but that's why I play purifier spam with mass Psybacks. I think in this situation I is essential.

Yeah, I don't actually play Driago/Knightwing, I just take a unit of 10 Terminators or Paladins and fill up the rest of the list with GKSS, Interceptors and of course psyrifle dreads. I don't think that pure Driago/Knightwing is the best way to go, since you end up with so few units and psycannons and whatnot.




I laugh every time a see a Vindicare on the table. They are a joke and anyone running on in there list is wasting points. Grab a freaking Psyfile Dread and save 10pts in the process.

I've not been impressed. I've faced one, and shot it off the board turn one. I don't care about how good it is at penetrating vehicles, 2 wounds, T4 and a 3+ cover save on a model that must stay immobile to shoot, only has a 36" range and still only has maybe a 30-40% chance of killing a vehicle on any given shot even when the vehicle is out in the open is not impressive.

[doom-kitten]

I've gotten agree with DarkLink here and I've curbstomped GK everytime I play them :D (Excorist vs Pally, equals dead Pally), but the FNP is pointless it's only effective against AP 3 or higher and these weapons do not stop the 2+ armour save and the pally can fail ths twice. The most effective way is to deal with Pally's at range or with Low AP and High STR and this is not something you'll see spammed at 1000pts (I could be very wrong here), I personally think the Vindicator is a great idea as I hate the sight of them and it's a well rounded tank for it's point cost. I don't know much about Grey Knights but at 1000 pts I feel a well balanced forced would be better than sinking points into an almost useless upgrade and try to field 2 troops or you may regret it if not convince your buddy that troops are needed. Perhaps you can feild the cheese and he can cover the nessecity.