So I'm trying to analyze what on Holy Mars happened yesterday. As you probably know, if you've been following my blog (dunno, since no one commented, so I'm going to assume nobody read the post from yesterday), I somehow won an Incursion RTT yesterday with an oddball Adeptus Mechanicus list.
I will be blunt. Adeptus Mechanicus is a very strong codex right now. They are winning a lot of tournaments, and...well, my win probably just further skewed their overall win-rate. Oops? Or maybe Best Coast Pairings and ITC don't count Incursion RTTs, I don't know. But yeah...uh, honestly, Adeptus Mechanicus is having an incredible win-rate right now. Is it as bad as Drukhari with their 70+% win rates? Not exactly, but ~65% win-rate is still pretty lopsided. I think there was a Show Me Showdown in Kansas City over the weekend where Adeptus Mechanicus won the tournament. 6 out of the top 8 were Drukhari and Adeptus Mechanicus, with a single Dark Angels list (Charlie's list that had tons of bikes, 10 Hellblasters - I think, they cost him 330 points - Relic Terminators and a ton of Bladeguard) somehow in there. Oh, and Imperium. But otherwise we had 3 Drukhari and 3 Adeptus Mechanicus lists in the top 8 alone, with Drukhari occupying 3rd and 4th.
Turns out that the winning Adeptus Mechanicus list is Lucius, with your standard Tech-priest Manipulus, Skitarii Marshal, hordes of 20 Skitarii infantry (about 80-100), squadrons of Ironstrider Ballistarii, and presumably some Serberys Raiders and Pxterii Sterylizors (how the heck did he fit all those Fast Attack units in a single list?). Well, the guys over at Frozen North weren't very exact on the Adeptus Mechanicus list, though they did provide full details on Charlie's Dark Angels list.
So yeah, Adeptus Mechanicus is just winning it. Lucius with their +1 to their armor save against D1 weapons, in particular, are just dominating.
...um, so how on Holy Mars did I manage to win against a Lucius list yesterday? We could point to pure bad luck and dice rolling on my opponent's part, I guess. It could be that she wasn't prepared to face a Knight. Is a Lucius cohort good against Knights? Well, you could argue that they are, with the Ironstrider Ballistarii blowing them off the table with their insane cognis twin lascannons (though my opponent admittedly didn't have the points for them and had to settle for cognis twin autocannons instead). Knights are just insane against Lucius because we have multi-damage weapons. Sure, the heavy stubbers and multilasers don't do s against them, but we have D D3 battle cannons, siegebreaker cannons and las-impulsors - not to mention Titanic Feet in close combat, D D6 thermal cannons, meltaguns and thermal spears, D 2 Avenger Gatling cannons and supercharged plasma, not to mention D 3 Helverin autocannons. Yeah, so...if you bring a Knight, chances are they won't have enough Ironstrider Ballistarii to blow you off the table, and you'll respond by destroying them, and then wrecking the s out of the poor Lucius Skitarii who can't do a single thing back.
Oh, did we just figure out that pure Knights are the best counter to Skitarii right now? Well, not the best, given that Ironstrider Ballistarii with their cognis twin lascannons exist, but even so...yeah. Speaking of which, we have an Imperial Knight player finishing 15th in the Show Me Showdown. And another at 20th place. Not bad, so perhaps Knights can still put on a good showing. This gives me hope!
What about Ryza, though? Why did I choose Ryza for my Adeptus Mechanicus? Simply put...fluff. Again, I'm not sure how many readers have been following my blog since the old days of 7th edition, but Draconis IV has always been a second Ryza, focusing on plasma weapons. That's where all the Leman Russ Executioner tanks, Stormblades and plasma guns and cannons for my Draconian Imperial Guard come from - from the forge world of Draconis IV. In recent times, I've been considering changing the name of the forge world because it's so damned confusing (Draconis III and Draconis IV, uh, what the hell?), but I still haven't come up with a satisfactory name, and I doubt I ever will. So Draconis IV it is. We've been ripping off Ryza and grabbing their plasma technology since the Horus Heresy. I wrote an entire post about my forge world's fluff, and you can probably see all the articles on the side of this blog. The history of my Knight World, Draconis III, and the forge world, Draconis IV. Hell, my Draconian Skitarii and Adeptus Mechanicus priesthood are more well developed than my Draconian Astra Militarum! Some people might accuse me of chasing the meta, but really, I didn't. You can see all my Adeptus Mechanicus posts - they stretch all the way back to 2015, when the army first came out in 7th edition. I've been playing Mechanicus for a very long time now, I can even claim that I'm one of the longest-playing Mechanicus players, having immediately started them when they were first released. I've been through the crazy Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation phase, I fielded my Adeptus Mechanicus and Knights during the defense of Konor at the beginning of 8th edition, and I continued playing them throughout 8th, even getting the new Skorpius and Serberys models for Engine War. Oh, and the Archaeopters. So no, I'm not a meta chaser, I've always been an Adeptus Mechanicus player. The fact that I stuck to Slaved Systems Forge World: Ryza instead of suddenly switching to Lucius should be evidence of that. I didn't go out and buy hordes of Skitarii, I simply bought new ones because I needed new "normal" Skitarii when Games Workshop abruptly decided that we could only bring 1 special weapon per 5-man squad, and only 1 type of each special weapon per 10 men, which threw my models off because I had 2 special weapons per squad. DAMN IT, GW! Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered with new Skitarii stuff.
Honestly, I considered throwing Legio Cybernetica (Kastelan robots) into the list, but I replaced them with a Knight Crusader because...I love Knights. It wasn't even a conscious decision. I originally took Kastelan robots, but one day, I was like, "f it, I love Knights, let's ditch the damned robots and throw in a Knight because I'm a Knight player at heart." I would have played Knights, but this was Incursion, and I couldn't fit in all the Knights into my list. I played pure Knights in the last 2 Incursions, and let's just say they didn't do very well. Well, having a Knight Preceptor and 4 Armigers did win me 2 games out of 3, but they didn't fare well against Salamanders - which was 2 of the lists I played against yesterday, so if I had brought a Knight list, they would have been chewed apart in combat by Bladeguard Veterans, Aggressors and whatnot. Then again, it wasn't as if my Serberys Sulphurhounds and Sicarian Ruststalkers did much damage...well, actually, they did. They wiped out the Lucius Skitarii, took out a tactical squad and Incursors and helped kill the Eradicators, so they made some of their points back. Oh, well. The Sicarian Ruststalkers even helped me get some secondary objecctives, planting banners and getting behind enemy lines, so yeah, they were definitely useful. I wouldn't have gotten any of those if I played a pure Knight list. Fun.
But yeah, I think my Knight was the single MVP of yesterday's tournament. He dealt the most damage, killing Bladeguard Veterans, Infiltrators, Eradicators, Land Speeders, Aggressors, Bray'arth, and he almost singlehandedly destroyed the Lucius Skitarii and Kataphron Breachers by himself. That was just...insane. I don't know what to say, but yeah. He's just funny as f. I guess Warhammer 40,000 is a funny game sometimes. And I got a lot of good rolls yesterday too, so I think luck played a major part of it.
That has to be the only explanation. My Knight Crusader being the MVP and a ton of luck. It's not because Ryza is superior to Lucius (I wish), but...the Knight made the total difference.
Well, I'm going to a couple more RTTs, so we'll see how it goes. This time, they will be 2,000 points Strike Forces instead of 1,000 points Incursions, so I can bring more Knights, but honestly, I doubt they will do that much more. I'm going to fail to accrue a lot of points and mission objectives, which kind of sucks, but hey...Knights. That's all I need. I plan to alter my list - I've been playing a melee-heavy list where my Knights charge up the field and run into combat, but this time I'll go for a more gunline and ranged list. I'll be altering the Allegiance Oaths and Household Traditions to fit that, using House Kanda - a branch of House Yato - who have been pledged to the Adeptus Mechanicus and Adeptus Titanicus (Legio Draconis, the Dark Dragons) in exchange for support and Sacristans. So I replaced Slayers of Beasts with Aggressive Persecution to reflect the Knights' ranged weaponry being designed to slay Titans (thermal cannons, volcano lances, las-impulsors, thermal spears, etc.) in hopes of doing better than my previous lists. I also switched to Questor Mechanicus for a more ranged and durable list, rather than a faster and hard-hitting one (so they regenerate 1 wound at the start of my turn), and can sit back and dish out a whole lot of shots. Heh. Let's try it!
Where's my Adeptus Mechanicus? Nah...after what happened yesterday, I think I'll give them a break for a bit. If I get absolutely destroyed on Saturday during the next RTT, I might switch back to a hybrid Adeptus Mechanicus-Imperial Knights list, but...I doubt I'll do that...as I said, we'll see.
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