Deathwing Veterans - Kari Christensen
The following is just my thoughts. I don't claim to be an expert in anything, this is basically me justifying my choices for future lists.
My current list as of late for 1850 has been a triple Land Raider list, 3 Squads, 3 Raiders, Belial, and 3 speeders. This has worked so so for me. In fact, the triple Raiders have given me mixed results since I started using them a while back. I had my most success with Deathwing back when I started playing them in 2006. Here's some useless history for those who care, if not skip over it. I started Deathwing back in 2006 after falling in love with the performance of Terminators in my Iron Hands army the year before. I wanted to run all Terminators so Deathwing was the obvious (and only) choice at the time. Not feeling too keen on loosing games with so few models, I read up on as many tactica as I could.
The Way of the Water Warrior was a huge help, and still a good read even now, 2 editions later. The tactica focus' on the old Grey Knights codex, but applies to any army in which you want to be the reactive player. By reading this, along with remembering the
Deathwing Mantra I ran a footslogging, shooty Deathwing list for about 6 months going nearly undefeated. I lost one game, maybe 2, to a Grey Knight player. I was running tri Vindicators then and had demolished a majority of his army when I decided to let up on him, and that was the nail in my coffin that game...well that and the unit of GK Termies that deep struck behind my guys.
With the release of 6th edition, I have been mulling over where to take my list now. I feel the changes to vehicles will hurt them. Wound allocation, or the lack thereof, along with the hit to power weapons seems to make TH/SS's near obsolete. Now the only things that can kill Terminators are massed fire (which has always been an issue), Las/plas and Melta, and things that either strike at I1in combat or some form of Dread/MC. Strategic placement of your models in shooting and combat means you could get away with having a single TH/SS to soak up a few ap1/2 hits and having fewer TH/SS will allow squads to be equipped for a variety of other tasks. Slinging stormbolter shots each turn seemed to get things done in the past, perhaps it will again?
Vehicles....they just seem.....meh now. The new hull point system along with the changes to how ap1/2 modifiers seem to make vehicles easier to kill. Vehicles, in my opinion, were already easy to kill in 5th, now it seems even Land Raiders are made out of paper mache. In 5th, your vehicles could shrug off countless glancing hits and take 3 or 4o Immoblized/Weapon Destroyed results before finally biting it. Now with the new system, each glancing hit takes off a hull point. The bright side to this is a single glance won't drop the effectiveness of your vehicle until its dead. The change to ap1/2 weapons just makes the prevaleance of melta all the more dangerous now. Vehicles are out for me... for the most part.
So after that tirade, I'm still confused as to what I should run. I feel troops will be more survivable and I think the base of my list will be 6 squads of Terminators. I plan on keeping my vehicles to a minimum and they will mostly be things that will keep as far back as possible. Vindicators may make a return in my list, and most likely Contemptors. At 1850, I plan on Belial, 6 squads of Termies with TH/SS(for now atleast), CMLs, Deathwing Banner, a Contemptor with Kheres Assault Cannons, CML, and a Lucius Pattern Drop Pod. The thought of the Contemptor dropping in and tear assing through the enemy's back lines is funny to me. I'm debating on dropping the banner for the apothecary, but there are a lot of uncertains about this list that will be hammered out with a few games of 6th.
In summary, 6th ed. sees the rise of Terminators, the fall of vehicles, and a shift in all that we have known for the past four years.
