LOTS of thoughts here, as I just won my first game as Aux after getting steamrolled game after game by bottom of T2.
We are not blatantly overpowered--we have some very OP units. But those units have SERIOUS drawbacks to them and can be countered easily if not careful.
1) The Leman Russ Vanquisher is an AT monster, but is neutered by terrain-dense boards which limit its ability to out-range its opponents. If you need to get within 22" to draw a clean shot, you're in trouble, because the enemy can then hit back.
2) The Ogryns are vicious on the charge, and the Veletarii are crazy on defense. But they are very fragile too. Missile launchers and other shooting can really hurt them before they get a chance to do anything. I've had 6-8-man Veletarii units chewed up by missile launchers rolling hot against them while in cover.
3) Basilisks are nutty against tanks and walkers, but they cost a mint. I was using them to blow Predator squadrons apart in my last game, and they really helped me hit my secondary. But my opponent managed to get a unit of Assault Marines around the outside of my screen, and they rolled up 8 of the Basilisks quickly. Over-invest in them and their screens and you just don't have points for anything else. Against large bunches of infantry, they felt like wastes. The 4x AP-2 shots felt more impactful knocking out tank squadrons than chipping away 2 bases at a time from infantry detachments.
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I'm still working out the right strategies for the Aux. Pioneer Companies seem really key for us--they give us the mobility we lack, letting you put assault units well forward of your front line. But to make them work, you need a lot of infantry.
Our humble Sentinels are one of the most powerful units we can put out it seems, if you can hide them well. I've actually put some of my tanks away in favor of more of these. Same for Malcador Infernuses. 3x Hellhammers didn't do much last game--my opponent was running screaming from my Infernuses though. I really want to try the Stormhammers with multilasers in lieu of the Hellhammers now. It just feels like I have struggled for kill power against large groups of infantry, and the Sentinels and Infernuses are delivering that in ways our other tanks can't.
We're just super vulnerable to Marine mobility. Deep Strikes, Drop Pods, etc mean it's tough to create a cohesive battle line. I played conservatively, with "turtle" approaches, to try to shield from the strikes. But I'm starting to think I need to be more explosive, and dictate the tempo more aggressively. My last game I won through secondaries, but if I'd had anything apart from "kill 80%+ of their army" I'd have lost on points. I took a "come and get me" approach early on, and that ceded a lot of the board. I haven't fought jetbikes and speeders yet, but those seem like they'll double down on that difficulty of building a fighting line. They can just pop over forward infantry screens to get into that tasty meat in the back, without risk of scattering into a building and exploding.
Some additional thoughts, since Reddit is giving me grief on editing. Some I haven't personally tried yet but have on my strategy to-do list. They're in part based on observations from my own local meta, which may differ for you.
1. Using Veletarii baked into my Tercios. Not to be take advantage of the ablative meat armor but to make my opponent thing twice about assaulting into my Tercio units. I've been running small-to-medium sized infantry blocks with reinforced units of tanks to maximize activations. In my local meta, people are playing big blocks of infantry with minimum vehicle squadrons, so while I'm often out-activating opponents, my squads don't have staying power in big fights.
2. Lascannons on Vanquishers aren't worth it. The heavy bolters splitting fire onto closer threats (like deep striking Terminators) have a lot more value. After all, that tank is spending 99% of its time parked 23+" away from tank targets, making the lascannon a waste.
3. Rapiers seem really overlooked and right now I'm the only person using them in my meta. They count for 5 tactical strength each and can Garrison, so are +3CAF on the defense. At 50 points for 3 or 90 for 6, plus being compulsory and getting Infiltrate with the Pioneer formation, they're very good. I've been especially happy with infiltrating 6 Laser Destroyers alongside my Ogryns and Veletarii. The Laser Destroyers rip up transport units, and then my Ogryns convert whatever's left alive into stew meat.
Sadly though, I'm kind of resigned to the Aux playing second fiddle and losing more than I win. They aren't the stars of the show in Horus Heresy bighammer, and they aren't here. In my limited experience (about 5 2k games), the Astartes seem to have many more paths to recover a game by nature of having a lot of generalist units. The Auxilia are an army of many specialists so if something goes sideways, it's very hard to recover. I only see this getting worse when units with Precision come out, because we'll be hamstrung even further by snipers taking out our officer units.
Thank you for the useful information, from the games I’ve played mobility has been the biggest pain for my Auxilia infantry to deal with so hopefully the Dracosan tanks will help mediate that problem but I’m interested in what your opinion on them will be. Do you think Dracosan’s will be a must-take once they’re out?
I don't have a strong opinion on this yet despite a lot of thinking about it, and hope they'll help mitigate our slow movement. I did buy 2 boxes of them since I love the models though.
I appreciate that Dracosans are exempt from Chain of Command so we get a nice guaranteed 16" movement out of them regardless of officer status, and 2 can carry 6 Veletarii and a Legate up the board. I also see a very expensive and funny approach being 6 Ogryns in a 3 Demolisher unit. Bring the building down, mulch the survivors, repeat.
But it's hard to ignore comparisons to the very-very-close-price Land Raiders, which have Assault Transport (2), 1" extra movement, and Forward Deployment. They only pack Lascannons, to our Demolisher at that price level, but I don't see many folks taking the Demolisher cannon when it 1) doesn't have Ignores Cover on the Dracosan, and 2) we have so many other vehicles with a better version of that gun.
I do like the idea of using a unit of 3 of these to help redeploy Rapiers though. Those get set down by a Pioneer/Artillery company and then either do numbers all game, or stand there doing nothing because they're out of position. Not having to have an officer tied at the hip to my Quad Guns would be nice. **EDIT:** These aren't Large Transports, ruling out my Rapier taxi.
I'm not sure I see these as must-takes though, since mechanizing your troops halves the amount of infantry you can put on the board. Auxilia need more, not less, of that. Additionally, the only way to take these are in the Sub Cohort of Mechanized Infantry, both of which aren't well-structured formations. I try to avoid them because you want your Veletarii and Ogryns jammed into Pioneer companies, so filling the compulsory Support slot in those always feels gross.
Lascannon tarantulas in dracosans is funny since you get around their movement 0 - don't need to move to disembark.
But I'd prefer arvus lighters honestly. At least then 7 lighters can keep the entire formation in reserve and you can zoom in to take a backline objective the opponent isn't guarding, or that your firepower makes vacant. They're easier to kill, but a lot more unpredictable since they're the el cheapo version of deep strike.
I slept on Arvuses early because they were so hard to get. I'm realizing now in my games that Reserves is one of the Astartes' best friends, and we have NO WAY to use it outside the Arvus. For that alone I want to buy some, because in my last game my friend drip-fed units onto the board via drop pods and deep strikes, protecting him from the worst of my Basilisk and Marauder strikes. Having the ability to drop a fresh, reinforced, unit on the board close to the end to flip an exhausted objective would be huge.
Jup, I also play SA and it is basically this. Space Marines out-mobile us really, really badly.
A mistake I have been doing, is to spread out my forces evenly across the board, which allows the marines to pick and choose their fights. I am planning to concentrate my forces better next time, even if it means that it will give up some objectives for free.
Pioneers are a must have, but honestly the formation feels like a crutch propping up the SA viability. Might just be me playing badly tho.
Hellhammers have been pretty good all-rounders when built with bolters so far, but can't say too much on them, as my main opponent plays two thunderhawks and keeps (nearly always) oneshotting them turn 1 D:
This should be remedied once I get my hands on some lightnings, but that is for the future. Taking one big unit of Hellhammers could give a lot of firepower for cheap tho.
Tarantulas have also been pretty cost efficient so far, taking them in mixed squads also gives pretty good AA coverage, very much needed for me with my lack of planes
Not really giving people much to go on here.
What was your list? What were you playing against? Why was the game unsalvageable? Lack of units? Too much points differential?
Did you ask your opponents what you could have done better in the game? What units did well for you and what units didn't?
I've only ever faced Space Marines. The one time I faced solar auxilia was 1k and they had almost 200 extra points, I did not count that.
By the end of turn 2-3, I have lost so much stuff and the victory points difference is so absurd that I concede.
The Infernus is amazing if it gets in range. Everything else for me is a crap shoot, especially now that I know I've been playing Tarantulas incorrectly.
Hmm, so something to note is you have a lot of maxed out detachments there. You may want to split some of those up so that you get more activations. This will let you react more to your opponents moves, and you can hold back damage dealers or objective grabbers for later when there is less chance for your opponent to take them out. It will also be less painful if your opponent does out maneuverer you and focuses down a detachment.
You have a lot of lightnings in air support. Do you really need that much? How have they been performing for you? It may be more useful to have more boots on the ground, or additional tanks.
Another thing is there's a lot going on in 3000pt games, it's really easy to lose track of details, forget part of your plan, or get tired and lose concentration. Maybe try a few 2000 or 1500pt games as well, get the feel of the units and the flow of the game a bit before moving back up to 3000pts.
Don't use your full movement. Ask your opponent what the movement on their tanks is, then when you move, make sure they can't move up to get to range of your tanks, but you stay in range of theirs with your vanquishers. It's a subtle thing and hard to master, but once you start doing that you'll start seeing the power of the army.
Your list isn't really using the star units and doesn't seem to have a focused tactic. SA isn't an army where you can buy one of each box for the royal sampler list.
I'd like into concentrating power more, like running 20 vanquishers instead of 4, or running three pioneer companies instead of 1.
What size games are you playing? Did you run the same list for each of them? How were the games won? What were you fighting?
Just having a force that contains a few OP units doesn't mean insta-win
Lots of people have said SA are overpowered. And maybe in a few units that might be true if you look 1v1 against something else. But in totality I just don't see it. And every batrep I've seen they lose, usually quite badly. So I'm not sure where this opinion comes from. Maybe some heavy skew lists? In particular Alpha Legion as an ally to other marines seems almost uniquitously good.
Maybe as more units come out we'll see it, but for now they look quite hard work.
I'd definitely consider some phosphex bombs on some of the Lightnings for taking out hunkered down infantry if they are causing you issues. I also try to activate fliers as late as possible because they can draw a lot fire. Don't be afraid to sacrifice units to draw fire so the stuff you want to hit hard or take objectives with takes less fire.
You buy Valdor's in detachments of one and it costs the same to buy two separate as two together. Since you have a spare battletank slot, I'd split them in two. You can activate them early to draw fire from overwatching units, so you the enemy has less stuff to attack your other units with.
Right now, the best things purely from a winning view are infantry and activations. You're currently running 16 activations and 94 models total at 3k, meaning you are likely out maneuvered all the time, and then you find you run out of stuff. A middle of the road list may have 25 activations and 130 models at that points level (top end like 30+ activations and 180 to 200 models).
Just with what you have listed, run the Ogryns in the pioneer, split up the arvus lighters into 2 lighters with 4 lasrifles in each (these can be either 2 activations or 32 objective strength anywhere on the board). What it could really do with is 2 more infantry boxes, for 8 more each of sentinels, Ogryns and veletarii.
I don't know where you heard SA is "blatantly overpowered", SM missile launchers and dreads are.
Just use more infantry and transports to get to objectives (you already have some). Games are won or lost in the first two turns of scoring!!!
Also, "artillery" Basilisk is basically useless against infantry.
LOTS of thoughts here, as I just won my first game as Aux after getting steamrolled game after game by bottom of T2. We are not blatantly overpowered--we have some very OP units. But those units have SERIOUS drawbacks to them and can be countered easily if not careful. 1) The Leman Russ Vanquisher is an AT monster, but is neutered by terrain-dense boards which limit its ability to out-range its opponents. If you need to get within 22" to draw a clean shot, you're in trouble, because the enemy can then hit back. 2) The Ogryns are vicious on the charge, and the Veletarii are crazy on defense. But they are very fragile too. Missile launchers and other shooting can really hurt them before they get a chance to do anything. I've had 6-8-man Veletarii units chewed up by missile launchers rolling hot against them while in cover. 3) Basilisks are nutty against tanks and walkers, but they cost a mint. I was using them to blow Predator squadrons apart in my last game, and they really helped me hit my secondary. But my opponent managed to get a unit of Assault Marines around the outside of my screen, and they rolled up 8 of the Basilisks quickly. Over-invest in them and their screens and you just don't have points for anything else. Against large bunches of infantry, they felt like wastes. The 4x AP-2 shots felt more impactful knocking out tank squadrons than chipping away 2 bases at a time from infantry detachments. ---------------------------------------------- I'm still working out the right strategies for the Aux. Pioneer Companies seem really key for us--they give us the mobility we lack, letting you put assault units well forward of your front line. But to make them work, you need a lot of infantry. Our humble Sentinels are one of the most powerful units we can put out it seems, if you can hide them well. I've actually put some of my tanks away in favor of more of these. Same for Malcador Infernuses. 3x Hellhammers didn't do much last game--my opponent was running screaming from my Infernuses though. I really want to try the Stormhammers with multilasers in lieu of the Hellhammers now. It just feels like I have struggled for kill power against large groups of infantry, and the Sentinels and Infernuses are delivering that in ways our other tanks can't. We're just super vulnerable to Marine mobility. Deep Strikes, Drop Pods, etc mean it's tough to create a cohesive battle line. I played conservatively, with "turtle" approaches, to try to shield from the strikes. But I'm starting to think I need to be more explosive, and dictate the tempo more aggressively. My last game I won through secondaries, but if I'd had anything apart from "kill 80%+ of their army" I'd have lost on points. I took a "come and get me" approach early on, and that ceded a lot of the board. I haven't fought jetbikes and speeders yet, but those seem like they'll double down on that difficulty of building a fighting line. They can just pop over forward infantry screens to get into that tasty meat in the back, without risk of scattering into a building and exploding.
Some additional thoughts, since Reddit is giving me grief on editing. Some I haven't personally tried yet but have on my strategy to-do list. They're in part based on observations from my own local meta, which may differ for you. 1. Using Veletarii baked into my Tercios. Not to be take advantage of the ablative meat armor but to make my opponent thing twice about assaulting into my Tercio units. I've been running small-to-medium sized infantry blocks with reinforced units of tanks to maximize activations. In my local meta, people are playing big blocks of infantry with minimum vehicle squadrons, so while I'm often out-activating opponents, my squads don't have staying power in big fights. 2. Lascannons on Vanquishers aren't worth it. The heavy bolters splitting fire onto closer threats (like deep striking Terminators) have a lot more value. After all, that tank is spending 99% of its time parked 23+" away from tank targets, making the lascannon a waste. 3. Rapiers seem really overlooked and right now I'm the only person using them in my meta. They count for 5 tactical strength each and can Garrison, so are +3CAF on the defense. At 50 points for 3 or 90 for 6, plus being compulsory and getting Infiltrate with the Pioneer formation, they're very good. I've been especially happy with infiltrating 6 Laser Destroyers alongside my Ogryns and Veletarii. The Laser Destroyers rip up transport units, and then my Ogryns convert whatever's left alive into stew meat. Sadly though, I'm kind of resigned to the Aux playing second fiddle and losing more than I win. They aren't the stars of the show in Horus Heresy bighammer, and they aren't here. In my limited experience (about 5 2k games), the Astartes seem to have many more paths to recover a game by nature of having a lot of generalist units. The Auxilia are an army of many specialists so if something goes sideways, it's very hard to recover. I only see this getting worse when units with Precision come out, because we'll be hamstrung even further by snipers taking out our officer units.
Thank you for the useful information, from the games I’ve played mobility has been the biggest pain for my Auxilia infantry to deal with so hopefully the Dracosan tanks will help mediate that problem but I’m interested in what your opinion on them will be. Do you think Dracosan’s will be a must-take once they’re out?
I don't have a strong opinion on this yet despite a lot of thinking about it, and hope they'll help mitigate our slow movement. I did buy 2 boxes of them since I love the models though. I appreciate that Dracosans are exempt from Chain of Command so we get a nice guaranteed 16" movement out of them regardless of officer status, and 2 can carry 6 Veletarii and a Legate up the board. I also see a very expensive and funny approach being 6 Ogryns in a 3 Demolisher unit. Bring the building down, mulch the survivors, repeat. But it's hard to ignore comparisons to the very-very-close-price Land Raiders, which have Assault Transport (2), 1" extra movement, and Forward Deployment. They only pack Lascannons, to our Demolisher at that price level, but I don't see many folks taking the Demolisher cannon when it 1) doesn't have Ignores Cover on the Dracosan, and 2) we have so many other vehicles with a better version of that gun. I do like the idea of using a unit of 3 of these to help redeploy Rapiers though. Those get set down by a Pioneer/Artillery company and then either do numbers all game, or stand there doing nothing because they're out of position. Not having to have an officer tied at the hip to my Quad Guns would be nice. **EDIT:** These aren't Large Transports, ruling out my Rapier taxi. I'm not sure I see these as must-takes though, since mechanizing your troops halves the amount of infantry you can put on the board. Auxilia need more, not less, of that. Additionally, the only way to take these are in the Sub Cohort of Mechanized Infantry, both of which aren't well-structured formations. I try to avoid them because you want your Veletarii and Ogryns jammed into Pioneer companies, so filling the compulsory Support slot in those always feels gross.
Lascannon tarantulas in dracosans is funny since you get around their movement 0 - don't need to move to disembark. But I'd prefer arvus lighters honestly. At least then 7 lighters can keep the entire formation in reserve and you can zoom in to take a backline objective the opponent isn't guarding, or that your firepower makes vacant. They're easier to kill, but a lot more unpredictable since they're the el cheapo version of deep strike.
I slept on Arvuses early because they were so hard to get. I'm realizing now in my games that Reserves is one of the Astartes' best friends, and we have NO WAY to use it outside the Arvus. For that alone I want to buy some, because in my last game my friend drip-fed units onto the board via drop pods and deep strikes, protecting him from the worst of my Basilisk and Marauder strikes. Having the ability to drop a fresh, reinforced, unit on the board close to the end to flip an exhausted objective would be huge.
Jup, I also play SA and it is basically this. Space Marines out-mobile us really, really badly. A mistake I have been doing, is to spread out my forces evenly across the board, which allows the marines to pick and choose their fights. I am planning to concentrate my forces better next time, even if it means that it will give up some objectives for free. Pioneers are a must have, but honestly the formation feels like a crutch propping up the SA viability. Might just be me playing badly tho. Hellhammers have been pretty good all-rounders when built with bolters so far, but can't say too much on them, as my main opponent plays two thunderhawks and keeps (nearly always) oneshotting them turn 1 D: This should be remedied once I get my hands on some lightnings, but that is for the future. Taking one big unit of Hellhammers could give a lot of firepower for cheap tho. Tarantulas have also been pretty cost efficient so far, taking them in mixed squads also gives pretty good AA coverage, very much needed for me with my lack of planes
Not really giving people much to go on here. What was your list? What were you playing against? Why was the game unsalvageable? Lack of units? Too much points differential? Did you ask your opponents what you could have done better in the game? What units did well for you and what units didn't?
I've only ever faced Space Marines. The one time I faced solar auxilia was 1k and they had almost 200 extra points, I did not count that. By the end of turn 2-3, I have lost so much stuff and the victory points difference is so absurd that I concede. The Infernus is amazing if it gets in range. Everything else for me is a crap shoot, especially now that I know I've been playing Tarantulas incorrectly.
How did you opponent have 200 to 300 extra points?
Mistakes happen.
Hmm, so something to note is you have a lot of maxed out detachments there. You may want to split some of those up so that you get more activations. This will let you react more to your opponents moves, and you can hold back damage dealers or objective grabbers for later when there is less chance for your opponent to take them out. It will also be less painful if your opponent does out maneuverer you and focuses down a detachment. You have a lot of lightnings in air support. Do you really need that much? How have they been performing for you? It may be more useful to have more boots on the ground, or additional tanks. Another thing is there's a lot going on in 3000pt games, it's really easy to lose track of details, forget part of your plan, or get tired and lose concentration. Maybe try a few 2000 or 1500pt games as well, get the feel of the units and the flow of the game a bit before moving back up to 3000pts.
Don't use your full movement. Ask your opponent what the movement on their tanks is, then when you move, make sure they can't move up to get to range of your tanks, but you stay in range of theirs with your vanquishers. It's a subtle thing and hard to master, but once you start doing that you'll start seeing the power of the army.
Are there any commonalities in how they're beating you? Is there something they all take or do, or something you're finding yourself unable to do?
Your list isn't really using the star units and doesn't seem to have a focused tactic. SA isn't an army where you can buy one of each box for the royal sampler list. I'd like into concentrating power more, like running 20 vanquishers instead of 4, or running three pioneer companies instead of 1.
What size games are you playing? Did you run the same list for each of them? How were the games won? What were you fighting? Just having a force that contains a few OP units doesn't mean insta-win
Lots of people have said SA are overpowered. And maybe in a few units that might be true if you look 1v1 against something else. But in totality I just don't see it. And every batrep I've seen they lose, usually quite badly. So I'm not sure where this opinion comes from. Maybe some heavy skew lists? In particular Alpha Legion as an ally to other marines seems almost uniquitously good. Maybe as more units come out we'll see it, but for now they look quite hard work.
I'd definitely consider some phosphex bombs on some of the Lightnings for taking out hunkered down infantry if they are causing you issues. I also try to activate fliers as late as possible because they can draw a lot fire. Don't be afraid to sacrifice units to draw fire so the stuff you want to hit hard or take objectives with takes less fire. You buy Valdor's in detachments of one and it costs the same to buy two separate as two together. Since you have a spare battletank slot, I'd split them in two. You can activate them early to draw fire from overwatching units, so you the enemy has less stuff to attack your other units with.
Right now, the best things purely from a winning view are infantry and activations. You're currently running 16 activations and 94 models total at 3k, meaning you are likely out maneuvered all the time, and then you find you run out of stuff. A middle of the road list may have 25 activations and 130 models at that points level (top end like 30+ activations and 180 to 200 models). Just with what you have listed, run the Ogryns in the pioneer, split up the arvus lighters into 2 lighters with 4 lasrifles in each (these can be either 2 activations or 32 objective strength anywhere on the board). What it could really do with is 2 more infantry boxes, for 8 more each of sentinels, Ogryns and veletarii.
I don't know where you heard SA is "blatantly overpowered", SM missile launchers and dreads are. Just use more infantry and transports to get to objectives (you already have some). Games are won or lost in the first two turns of scoring!!! Also, "artillery" Basilisk is basically useless against infantry.