Thread: Cheesing the Cheese (Or how I learned to love the leaf blower and deploy turn 1)

So, when I roll up to the 40K table I'm there to have fun first and worry about winning second. That's not to say I don't want to be competitive, that's part of the fun. But I don't sweat getting stomped by Thomas' Demons (watching my power fist sergeant get waxed by a herald of tzeentch is just funny) or getting paired up to the occasional leaf blower, a totally legal, competitive list that is fairly popular.

I didn't get blown off the table today, but my buddy did and it got me to wondering. How can I deploy my army on the table against Mech IG, go second, and get my ghetto terminators (you know, the one armed TH/SS Termies that drive people crazy on BoLS) across the board. And how can I do this in the silliest manner possible.

Here is my answer

HQ:
Darnath Lysander
Space Marine Librarian (PA only)

Elite:
5 man TH/SS Terminators, Dedicated Land Raider Crusader w/ EA/MM

Troops
2x Tac Squad powerfist/melta/multimelta/Rhino
Tac Squad powerfist,combi-plasma/plasmagun/multimelta/Rhino

Fast
3x 5 man Assault Squad w/ Rhino

Concept

Get a nice, big, LOS blocking piece of terrain. Hide your Plasma Tac squad and all of your assault squads behind it on foot. (with the objective if it's capture&control).
Deploy the empty Rhinos as your outer layer of cover, the two melta tac squad rhinos and the empty plasma rhino behind the assault rhinos. LandRaider behind them. If you can take advantage of cover to get some hull down saves go for it. If not, screw it, it's 5th edition, quit yo whining. (Judicial Cheesing during terrain placement would of course be in theme, also feel free to deploy your vehicles parallel to the long table edge, move up, and rotate 90 degrees for that extra couple inches of movement. If you aint cheatin you aint trying)

Turn 1: Whatever Rhinos are left move forward, hopefully you can smoke some empty Rhinos and give cover to full rhinos and the raider, if not smoke your full Rhinos and the Raider. If nothing in the open is left, take pleasure in how silly being able to wipe out 6 rhinos and a land raider in one turn of shooting truly is.

Turn 2: Run forward whatever is left, smoke 'em if you got 'em (I prefer Marlboros myself)

Turn 3: Empty Rhinos (give thanks to the divine intervention that got them there) Tank Shock. Melta Rhinos do that Melta that they do so well. Land Raider Dumps Lysander, Termies and the power armor only librarian (also known as little timmy extra wounds for some extra wound allocation cheese) and multiple assault like there's no tomorrow.

Turn 4: Everythings gone to hell at this point anyways, no point planning anything else out. Hopefully your 15 assault marines and the plasma tac squad can hop out and contest or grab some objectives. (See above with regards to interventions by your deity of choice)

When the leaf blower wins anyways, take solace in the fact that you got some laughs out of it. Cause it would have blown your heavy marine list to hell too

Originally Posted by MarkT

I didn't get blown off the table today, but my buddy did and it got me to wondering. How can I deploy my army on the table against Mech IG, go second, and get my ghetto terminators (you know, the one armed TH/SS Termies that drive people crazy on BoLS) across the board. And how can I do this in the silliest manner possible.

Here is my answer

Huh? I'm assuming this is about my IG since I was the only one there today. I don't really think my list qualifies as a leafblower. I mean it's not exactly friendly, but the army has alot of close range shooting (the majority of the weapons being between 24-36 inches in range).

If this isn't about me, then sorry for being retarded.


Also, I dont think Land Raiders are a great idea vs IG, leafblower or otherwise. They're huge, juicy targets for whatever special/heavy weapons they have. Deepstrikers/flooding the field with rhinos, or outflankers are what messes me up personally anyway, while I tend to feel safe in throwing some veterans at a land raider first turn (not really something I can afford to do to a rhino).

The problem I see is that you have two scoring units or - at best - four five-man combat squads as fragile scoring units in a game where objectives are key.

I would go with five tac squads instead of two tacs and three assaults. If you are going for the leaf blower, the extra attacks aren't going to make that much of a difference in cc against non-blob guard.

An alternative (though a pricey one), would be to go with Kantor instead of Lysander and make two of the assault squads sternguard. Again, you get (even) more attacks, you still get stubborn, and four to eight scoring units.

Drop pods.

Originally Posted by AdamHarry

Drop pods.

Pretty much this. Vulkan, melta tri-force pods, maybe some dreads, go to town. Now, if you're looking at the 2009 'ard boyz 2500-point list, I think there was a mystic to drop the big FU on deep strike tactics... but moving forward, the GK codex should fix the allied mystics silliness. You'll still have to play with your reserved pods potentially sucking it up from a Master of the Fleet, but at least you're in the other guy's face turn 1, and returning some damage.

As far as an army that would actually deploy and just suck mud the first turn... ML devastators are your friends.

Originally Posted by Splug

I think there was a mystic to drop the big FU on deep strike tactics...

Mystics are what keeps the Leaf Blower viable against Drop Pod armies. If you're dropping in and some plasma or melta tank gets to blast away at you before you do anything, then you are not going to win.