Monday 25 March 2013

Dedicated Transports = First blood ?

It's becoming a pattern to target dedicated transports to score first blood, even when they are in heavy cover. And you are seeing less of them in my area. 9 out of 10 space marine players I faced didn't have any rhino's or razorbacks, you keep seeing drop pods for the obvious reasons. But even then, e.g. a drop pod with a Cybot is dropped behind your lines, in 6th edition you'd target the drop pod first as it rewards you with 1 victory point ... this is so (let me put it in games workshop words) "uncinematic".











Most of the dedicated transports do not have better armor than 11 on their sides (except for necron DT, but they cost 3 times a rhino), so they are easy to disable and give you one victory point in every game. Many player shy away from fielding them, because when they don't get the iniative first blood goes to their opponent. As an ork player with ork trukks as DT I know what it means to hand out first blood to every opponent. I always think twice now if I should field them at all, especially with the 6th edition changes, because 12 ork boyz need to survive the ramshackle result of the trukk, overwatch, nerf to furious charge iniative and random charge range.

Back to roots of today's post, I like how dedicated transports were used in 5th edition, Space wolves rushing with them, others blocking LOS for other valuable units, you could do so many different things with them. Now you always worry not to give first blood away. I think that dedicated transports should not count towards first blood, this way people don't need to worry about losing them early in the game, and this changing target priority back to where it should be.

What do you think ?

4 comments:

  1. Same here, I always fear losing first blood if taking rhinos for my SW. Without that I would still be taking 5 or 6 for my Grey Hunters every game.

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  2. gw should really change that ... and it would increase their sales ^^

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  3. I will say that its only a small number of games that the first blood point makes or breaks the game for me. Personally, I'd rather sacrifice the 1 point for the added mobility and protection, especially with CSM where taking casualties can = taking morale tests. If I've been beaten on objectives and need secondary objectives, the game has already started to go down the tubes lol.

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  4. @ Ian
    I agree with you that 1 victory point often does not make a difference. But that's the point even before the game starts people tend to leave their dedicated transports at home, because they know it will most likely give their opponents first blood. I think that we shouldn't need to worry about that.

    I've had 3 games of the relic mession in a row, and the secondary objects ruled the outcome of those.

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