Saturday, April 30, 2016

Iron Hands Superfriends - Angels of Death

Iron Hands Captain

So the Angels of Death supplement has been out a while, and my friends and I have been having fun testing out some different lists here and there with the new Nested Detachment formations (aka Decurions).

I've always liked Iron Hands, though before their FNP was somewhat ineffectual when compared to some of the tastier Chapter Tactics on the market. With the new Fist of Gorgon detachment, however, their Chapter Tactic suddenly became more viable. The new Iron Hands Reliquary also added a whole new reason to take that chapter as well.

In my latest game, the MVP definitely ended up being a Captain with a Relic Blade and Gorgon's Chain, attached to a command squad, with a ML 2 Librarian attached. In the formation and with the Chain, I was able to easily maintain a +2 FNP result for the entirety of the game. Highlights include going toe-to-toe with an entire unit of Meganobs with PKs and a Painboy, as well as an entire unit of Bikes with a warboss and a painboy.

For 4 turns this unit withstood ridiculous amounts of krumpin' (thanks to the Librarian casting the Might of Heroes power from the Librarius discipline) and was able to take out the Meganob squad and also put a few wounds on the Warboss. My Captain, with his 3+ invulnerable save and 2+ FNP, was able to tank every wound thrown his way. He didn't suffer a single wound the entire battle, despite the opposing Warboss's best efforts.

Other fun tricks was giving my Centurion Devestator squad 5+ FNP with an attached Librarian in Terminator armor (also able to tank invul wounds, and give the squad +2 Toughness from Might of Heroes), and I greatly enjoyed the FNP benefits my tactical squads were able to reap. My opponent was running mostly Meganobs, however, so the Powerklaws may not have been the best example of my list's newfound resilience.

All in all, however, I believe that with the new formation, this is a fun list to play. I like to run:

  • Librarius Conclave (1 power armor ML 2, 1 bike ML 1, 1 terminator ML 1)
  • Demi Company (Bikes with meltas, Gravcents, 3 basic squads, command squad with 2 melta/2 grav/ apothacary, and the Captain with a Relic's Blade and a Gorgon's Chain, mostly in drop pods where able. Command squad took a rhino.
  • Skyhammer Annihilation Force (1 Dev squad with Grav, 1 Dev squad with LCs, Assault squads with flamers)

The Librarius Conclave let me sprinkle my little force multipliers around, spreading out the FNP bonuses of the detachment. The Skyhammer gives me some decent mobility, allowing a 1st turn drop that gets lots of models on the board quickly and where I want them to go. The command squad hauled ass on turn one, getting them where I needed them to go and camping midfield objectives, and proving to be a very difficult unit to move. Bikes zipped around as needed, grabbing objectives (thanks obsec) and popping juicy targets with their meltas. The gravcents got deployed in the middle of the board, on elevated terrain, providing a deadly obstacle to enemy movement. (Definitely made their points back).

This is probably one of the better ways to run this detachment. With lots of infantry, you get lots of benefit from the FNP bonuses. If I were to change something from my list, it would be to provide more rhinos to the Demi company instead of drop-pods, to give more first-turn presence. The mobile strike force of the Skyhammer helps grab those deep field objectives well enough where the pods in the Demi company aren't as needed.

I'll be playing this type of list more in the future, and I would love to see if I can add to the Superfriends command squad to make a decent deathstar.

Ideas so far include:

  1. Adding a Company Champion for more CC capability
  2. Adding a Chaplain for another invulnerable wound-tank, and increasing CC capability
  3. Adding one more librarian for redundancy to keep those buffs going.

That's it for now, I'll report from the field as I test them out further.

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