From the start of the blog i have always kept my Catachans straight with the fluff. I have always taken great joy in being not one of does players that look in the book, takes the best units and then just spam them on the armylist paper. When i play my foot army i know many people are shaking their heads and think: "Ohh boy.... this guy doesn't know whats going on in his own codex" but at the same time it is almost always guarantied that the same person will smile while thinking it.That being said i wanna change my army in a bit different direction and i am gonna tell you my reasons.The Weaknesses
My list have 2 big weaknesses in objective games. Mobility and heavy firepower. Cause i have no transports i am forced to either foot slog it up the board towards the objectives, infiltrate near the objectives or outflank and grab one of my opponents objectives while holding on to my own.
First one is very bad for IG since we are very weak in generel close combat. Our army is made for pounding the enemy from afar certainly not get closer.
Secondly, while it is possible we are back to point one. Even Harks squad dug in deep with 3+ cover save, die very fast when close combat troops get to em or enough ranged firepower are brought on em.
Third have been my main tactic since i started playing and while this can work well in some situations, it suffers from a few things in my current army list. My main out-flankers have been Sentinels, penal legion and from time to time Harkers devils(veterans). The most common reason to this not working is that outflanking is horrible unreliable. Sometimes my out-flankers all come in in 1st or 2nd turn and get wiped out in 3rd or 4th turn. For this tactic to work best, i have to arrive in 3rd or 4th turn so my opponent already move most his forces forward.
Mobility.. Yeah footslogging troops don't have much of that. Even with my guerrilla army list with Harker, penal legion, sentinels and Marbo. Once they are in, they are in and my opponent knows where i will be at the next turns.
Heavy firepower.. while my army can put out a good deal of str 5-8 pr turn, i am really lacking the lascannons or bigger to take on some of the bigger beasts in the game. I am lacking a central gather point where i can focus my defenses around and dig in.
The change
Here is a sketch with my thoughts on how i would like to try to improve my army and at the same time go to 1750 points and be more competitive.
I still got some things to figure out. Like what weapons to put on the chimeras and what to use the last 8 points on.
The plan
The plan with the list is to fortify myself as far away from my opponent as possible and put all the hurt on him as possible from afar. Then in turn 3 or 4 start moving my chimeras out with my CCS and PCS inside to claim and contest objectives in turn 5 and in case game goes further hold it.
My army will center around my basilisk and mortars. I will use my infantry squads as sacrificial units to get eaten up when they reach me and then i will counterattack with my special weapons teams with some(hopefully) well placed demolition charges and then finished by ogryns or Straken CCS if they survive mass firepower and the demo charges after the consolidation move.
The sentinels and my penal legion will still outflank and hopefully draw some units away from the main force and maybe even capture a objective(it have happened before). Marbo will still jump out of nowhere and deal some hurt. Harkers devils... They will be where they will be most needed depending on who and how my opponents position himself. Which brings me back to the first picture in the post!
What do you guys think? One of the main worries i have is that the chimeras even held back behind cover might not survive the first 3 turns if my opponent figures it out. But then again, they are front armor 12 and i will try to park one so that it will give cover to the basi and the other so it will get a 4+ cover save. Might be easier said than done.
Ras signing out!
