Hey all, here again to talk about a sore topic of competitive discussion...the Land Raider.
Now the once popular, then unseen, now suddenly again popular AV14 vehicle that seems to be in every persons power armored army has always been used as part of the death star....and lets face it, it can be good at that.
Who doesn't want something that can hold between 1-16 models (depending on pattern) and drive forward their probable assault terminator squad forward unmolested, and for awhile that worked. This seemed to always work until you ran into a guy sporting a dozen meltaguns and then your AV14 suicide tank just seemed a waste of points. Heck I can say I have been dillusioned in the past by filling up my favorite Land Raider Crusader full of dudesmen in big boy armor to drive down my opponents throat. Whether it was the above LRC, or the Vulkan happy Redeemer this can work....but only in games where the matchup is good can the death star delivery system work....and it can be expensive...
Yet melta still exsists and it does punish your taking of a 245+ point model now and then. So where can we find a strength for the AV14 gun boat?
IT seems to be that the Land Raiders only weakness tends to be melta....the only other (in terms of the most common enemy of marines) weapon that can damage it is the S9 lascannon.....this is unreliable as it still needs a 6 to penetrate the Land Raider and with the typical abilites for Land Raiders to become resistent to shaken and stunned results we can leverage the lack of long ragned anti-AV14 out there.... We also have the nice mobile bunker of the lesser to be seen Godhammer pattern Land Raider. Being equipped with power of the machine spirit as well as two twin linked lascannons and a TL heavy bolter (also the probable multi-melta) this is a bunker that should be more utilized. We can utilize this as a viable option by haveing a scoring unit hide inside of the Land Raider. This gives us a scoring AV14 vehicle that is for the most part only vulnerable to melta weapons which (unless they come in in deepstrike form, which has its defences against as well) has to go through a good bubblewrap to get into 2D6 range. This is also a good way to counter grey knights because as soon as you eliminate any possible Storm Ravens they cannot touch your Land Raider easily, minus luck, at all giving you an edge.
With a couple scoring land Raiders holding up our backfield the marine player definatly has a defending advantage. With some good anti-melta practice you can keep these now scoring vehicles shooting thier lascannons downrange and holding a good position. I have ran many duel Raider lists as both Chaos and Marines and now rarely lose one of them....This can give us an advantage in Capture and Control as well as Sieze ground missions...also do not forget these are two hard killpoints in a probable tough killpoint army....more on this later.....
I guess you aren't seeing much Dark Eldar in your local meta. As a DE player, I just drool all over when I see one, let alone two of these on the table. For two, that's 500 points of relatively easy to to crack at range armor taking up 25% of your points.
ReplyDeleteAlso, when using that many points for a model, you can't afford to have screening rhinos and the model is too big to be screened by troops so cover saves may be hard to generate.
A friend bought three of them and would mech up like crazy. Then I started DE. He doesn't like me much any more as that's a ton of cash sitting on the shelf collecting dust.
I feel the idea of Land Raiders is more of a delivery system than a fighting vehicle.
ReplyDeleteI just send it forward.. if i am lucky i can drop my termie wherever i want and still shoot something.
If no atleast my Termie is spare 1-2 turns of getting shot.. After all your Termies are the one who going to be bringing the punch.