Building YET MORE Better Combat Patrols

Summary

In this episode of the Poorhammer Podcast, hosts Brad and Eric dive into the intricacies of designing ideal Combat Patrols for Warhammer 40K factions. They start by discussing new microphone setups before moving into news updates, Patreon polls, and the challenge of redesigning Combat Patrol boxes with a corporate mindset. The hosts aim to create balanced and enticing entry points for new players without wild pricing or unachievable contents. They focus on factions like Emperor's Children, Necrons, Salamanders, and AdMech, with a fun mix of analysis, critique, and strategic creativity. Ultimately, the episode delivers engaging discussions on improving accessibility and excitement in tabletop gaming.

Highlights

• Eric and Brad banter about podcast setups, adding humor with new microphone tests. 🎙️
• Discussion about the importance of podcast audio quality and listener feedback. 📣
• Insightful exploration of designing combat patrols with a corporate perspective. 🏢
• Eric breaks the rules creatively, leading to spicy design strategies for Combat Patrols. 🌶️
• Fun exploration of varied Necron and Space Marine Combat Patrol designs. 🛡️
• The hosts brainstorm new ideas for Emperor's Children using unconventional methods. ⚔️
• AdMech Combat Patrol redesigns reveal the complexity and cost challenges. 🤖
• Brad and Eric deliver a playful yet critical take on Warhammer's marketing strategies. 💡

Key Takeaways

• Dive into Combat Patrol design with Brad and Eric's fun approach! 🎨
• Find out why microphones matter in podcasting! 🎤
• Get the latest Warhammer news and Patreon poll updates. 🔔
• Explore creative strategies for designing better Combat Patrols. 🤔
• Emperor's Children combat patrol ideas break traditional rules! 🎲
• Discover unique Necron patrols that offer thematic variety! 👽
• Uncover the corporate mentality behind Games Workshop's designs. 💼
• Join the hosts as they playfully critique current Warhammer strategies! 😂

Overview

In this laughter-filled episode, Brad and Eric tackle the challenge of creating ideal Combat Patrols for Warhammer 40K. From discussing new microphone setups to unpacking the importance of listener feedback, the duo balances jest with insightful commentary. Their initial banter sets a jovial tone, easing listeners into more complex tabletop gaming discussions.

As they dive into the nuts and bolts of Combat Patrol design, Eric and Brad maintain an engaging approach with thought-provoking insights. They critique existing patrols for Warhammer factions like Emperor's Children and Necrons, offering unique ideas that break away from traditional designs. Their discussions illuminate the challenges of creating balanced, exciting starter boxes for new players.

Crowning the episode are Eric's imaginative takes on Space Marine and AdMech patrols, bringing to light the creative and financial gymnastics involved in such designs. Despite the complexities, the hosts keep the dialogue entertaining and relatable, underscoring the fun in wargaming while challenging industry norms.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction In the 'Introduction' chapter of episode 165 of the Pormer Podcast, hosts Brad and Eric briefly introduce themselves and express excitement about discussing strategies for selling combat patrols. Brad also mentions testing a new microphone setup, hoping it will enhance the audio quality of the podcast.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Podcast Updates and News The chapter discusses the challenges and updates related to podcast recording. The speaker mentions that there have been recent adjustments and setups over the last two hours to improve the recording quality, acknowledging the uncertainty of how the changes will affect the final output. They humorously attribute any potential issues to experimentation with the recording equipment. Feedback is requested on the audio quality, specifically mentioning interest in the listener's perception of one person's audio clarity. The chapter encapsulates the learning process involved in podcast production.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Combat Patrols Overview The chapter discusses the exploration of different 'knobs and toggles' in the context of combat patrols. The narrator talks about experimenting with various controls and settings, noting that these experiments seem positive and unlikely to have negative outcomes. They humorously discuss the potential to add sound effects to their episodes, but assure that they won't introduce unnecessary sound effects, jokingly leaving such tasks to a figure named Burellio. Overall, the chapter gives a lighthearted take on the technical exploration and the humor surrounding the incorporation of new tools or features.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Rules for Combat Patrol Design The chapter introduces the topic of combat patrol design rules and begins with some community news regarding a patron poll, urging community engagement. The speaker humorously expresses a personal plea for support by sharing their reluctance to return to work, and mentions the availability of merchandise at Poorhammer.com. The news section is intended to segue into the core discussion on combat patrol design.
• 03:00 - 12:00: Emperor's Children Combat Patrol The chapter 'Emperor's Children Combat Patrol' begins with a discussion on rules of engagement, emphasizing a break from traditional norms to add excitement to the episode. The notion is presented that rules are meant to be broken, especially from a designer's perspective, as they know when breaking a rule will work. The core rule discussed is about the constraints of fitting within a combo box, which has limited space, thus prohibiting having 45 vehicles.
• 12:00 - 22:00: Necrons Combat Patrols The chapter discusses the concept of Necrons Combat Patrols, highlighting the constraints of working with existing models rather than imagining new ones. The focus is on selling current inventory effectively, ensuring that the combat patrol serves as a balanced introduction for a first army. The chapter emphasizes not creating an overly skewed or 'meme' list, and discusses the general expectation that a combat patrol should amount to approximately 500 points, despite shifting standards.
• 22:00 - 31:00: Salamanders Combat Patrol The chapter 'Salamanders Combat Patrol' discusses the strategic mindset needed for assembling a combat patrol box in the context of competitive gaming or business strategy. The main point is to maintain a stubborn stance and not concede strategically, focusing on achieving at least 500 points with the resources available. The chapter highlights the importance of balancing ambition with realism, ensuring the assembled box doesn't disproportionately exceed practical limits, mirroring a corporate discipline mindset.
• 31:00 - 40:00: Admech Combat Patrol - Fixing the Challenges The chapter discusses the strategy for addressing the challenges faced by the Admech Combat Patrol. The key focus is on the discount strategy, suggesting that a cap of around 40% is optimal for combo boxes, based on trends from previous editions. The author notes that while recent boxes might not be as appealing, aiming for variety by including at least four types of units and ensuring there is one battle line per box could enhance appeal.
• 40:00 - 41:00: Conclusion and Outro In the 'Conclusion and Outro' chapter, the speaker discusses breaking a common rule about including at least one basic unit in an army. They acknowledge this rule is not strictly enforced, as long as there is infantry for objectives. They mention past issues with combat patrol designs but are considering their personal approach going forward. The final rule highlights ensuring strategies work well in multiples.

Building YET MORE Better Combat Patrols Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Hello and welcome to the Pormer Podcast, episode 165. I'm your host, Brad. This is my co-host, Eric. How's it going? And it's time for us to put on our soulless corporate hats and think about how to sell people combat patrols. Sounds good. But before we get into the episode proper, real quick news. If I sound weird at all today, we've got a brand new mic setup that I am testing. Hopefully, it sounds better than ever.
• 00:30 - 01:00 And we'll be updating Eric to this one in the next couple weeks here. If I am unlistenable this week, that's why I'm hoping this all worked out. We spent the last like 2 hours doing setup so that this will work right. But you never know what'll happen when we actually hit record, right? So, blame Brillio. Exactly. No, but really let us know like if the audio for Brad sounds worse or better cuz like the big thing of this is there's a bunch more knobs and toggles, which is great, but we have no idea what we're really doing. Yeah, there's all
• 01:00 - 01:30 sorts of knobs and toggles that we can push here now. We're just pushing buttons and knobs and seeing what happens. This seems to be good. Yeah, on the plus side, there's nothing annoying that can occur. Definitely not. I promise not to add a bunch of sound effects from a soundboard during our episodes as much as now I have access to them. We'll leave those unfunny bits to Burellio as always. Yeah, that's that's more of a stream
• 01:30 - 02:00 thing. True. Little bit more news though. We've got the patron poll up. It's going active until May 23rd and uh seems like it's pretty close. Yeah, currently first and second place are off by five votes. So, if you have not voted yet in the patron poll, go do so. If you're not a patron, please, for the love of God, become a patron. I want to die right now. I don't want to go back to work tomorrow. Please, please, please consider. We also have merch. Take a look. Poorhammer.com. No particular reason there. But I think that's enough news. Let's actually jump into this with
• 02:00 - 02:30 some rules of engagement. All right. So, I actually broke rules compared to how we started this series this time because I wanted to make it a little spicier this episode. That's what rules are made for though, right? Yeah. Rules are made to be broken. A HSR reference. You set it up and then as a designer, you're like, I know I can break this rule at this point. So anyway, our basic rules are it has to fit inside of a combo box because they do have limited space. So you're not getting 45 vehicles in there cuz it just won't fit. You need models
• 02:30 - 03:00 that currently exist. We can't wish up new models to make the perfect combat patrol. This is about selling what we currently have in stock as Games Workshop. Optimally, this is a box that's like balanced as your first army with that in mind of like, hey, let's build a not completely skewed meme list. And because combat patrol should be at least 500 points, as much as they keep moving this goalpost, I don't know if that's true anymore, but thereabouts is good. Look, just because one side of an
• 03:00 - 03:30 argument keeps on moving the goalpost doesn't mean that you have to give ground. We will stubbornly stand here until they change course. So, we need at least 500 points in our box or somewhere thereabouts. And again, like you said in the intro, we want to keep this with the like corporate mentality in mind. We don't want to be like, I can build the best combo box, combat patrol box ever, when it's literally 7,000 points of models for like $170. Great.
• 03:30 - 04:00 nailed it. 10 out of 10. Buy them all. Yeah. So, we're going to say discount wise, you normally want to cap at like 40% seems to be the best they've done for combo boxes between 9th and 10th. Usually, it's like high30s is like one of the best ones. Yeah, there's definitely been worse ones and several of them now are not particularly great, but we also want a little bit of variety in these boxes. So, we want to include at least four types of units. Also, ideally, we would include one battle line per box so that you have like a
• 04:00 - 04:30 basic unit from your army. I'm going to be breaking that rule this week. Yeah, I think that one's one of our like looser rules, I guess. So long as you have like infantry to do like stand on an objective, it's like guess kind of. We've had problems before with GW having like wildly wrong combat patrols, designs that don't make sense. So that's why we did this originally, but I'm getting to the point where I we'll talk about when we get to one of mine. The last rule is like let's make sure that it's good in multiples because when
• 04:30 - 05:00 you're trying to get into your first army, you're going to get the box and like have an expectation of maybe going towards a 2k 40k list. So like grabbing a second one, maybe more as like your full intro. Hey, that's a great deal. Let's do it. That would be optimal. Let's try and keep that in mind. But I think that's about it, right? Yeah. So with the rules out of the way, let's get into what armies we tackled this week. All right. Starting with Emperor's Children. Oh, we don't want to start with the admech that I promised for like the last three of these we did. All
• 05:00 - 05:30 right. No, I guess we'll sandbag it. That's fine. Well, I mean, they don't know yet. Unless they were dirty cheaters and looked ahead in the timeline and for his children. Yeah, this one's going to be tough. So, like the current box is not bad, but it's also not particularly amazing. What's in the current EC box? I'm only asking this cuz I don't know. I saw it once. Yeah, it's an Exaltant. six flawless blades, so two groups of three and then 10 of the battle line, the infractors or tormentors. They're choose one or the other kind of thing. Not bad, but also
• 05:30 - 06:00 like you're not actually getting that big of a discount and it's kind of skewed. So, it's fine. One of the problems with EC is just the range is so small that you literally only have so many permutations. Yeah, this is the problem we had with Thousand Suns. Though, this is less extreme than Thousand Suns where there were other issues, but yeah. So, like I've got two lists here. One of them's just kind of like a funny thought experiment and the other one I actually kind of like. I'll take one of each new kit for 555 points is an exaltant, a cacophinist, a
• 06:00 - 06:30 tormentor, a flawless blade, and a noise marine. I'll just take one of the new ones. That's honestly not terrible. No, it's fine. It's perfectly fine. And like it works well in multiples that like that's your army other than some extra spice. Yeah. And you easily pick up two of this, maybe three. Yeah, because this is your army. It's a little high on discount at like 39%. Yeah. Like it's not to the point of like breaking our rule, but at the same time when you look at it compared to the current one that they think is the optimal thing, it would be like instead of one of the
• 06:30 - 07:00 flaws blades, we got a noise marine unit and then we also threw on an additional character. It's not that extreme. Honestly, that seems completely reasonable as a like these are supposed to be better and that is a better box. True, but at the same time, like there is a certain flare lost from this one cuz like it's it's balanced. It does the job, but there isn't like anything special. Like it's very efficiently good. The one that kind of had a little bit more character. So it's a Lord Cacoffinus, the six noise marines, 10
• 07:00 - 07:30 tormentors, and a Chaos Land Raider. Ooh, you're trying to fit a whole Land Raider in this. I am. And it is cheaper than the other one. This comes in at 267, so like 36% off. still on the higher end, but definitely within reason. Yeah, but a Lion Raider is a big vehicle. Like I'm not saying like I believe these should have centerpieces, etc., right? Like that's the whole point is like you want a nice centerpiece. And that's one of the problems with Emperor's Children is like their centerpieces are the big character. It's Full Grim and nothing. Yeah. That's what
• 07:30 - 08:00 you get. And like as much as I do love the troops, they look awesome, they're not centerpieces. No, it's clearly a part of the range that's missing. So yeah, I guess the Land Raider there works for that. But like I have trouble seeing such a large tank being in a combat patrol. A normal tank is fine, but like a Landra Raider is like large. It should be able to fit in the box. I think that was one of the ones like I think the sprew fits, but I don't know for certain. I haven't really built a Land Raider. Yeah, but when I It's half
• 08:00 - 08:30 the points I worry about getting into the like bringing a Primark to a 500 point game territory, you know? Like it's not that extreme, but it's getting up there. I mean, that's kind of true for any tank. The land raider is on the more extreme side. Absolutely. And it's very possible. I had put this list together as well with a rhino, but I ran into the problem of our battle line unit is $70. So, the tormentors are infractors, which kind of screws us with the fact that we only have like five other units to choose from. And you put
• 08:30 - 09:00 the Rhino in and like any list you put together ends up at like $220, $230 or $280. And it's very possible that the better list for combat patrol is not a land raider, it's a rhino cuz you also get firing deck so you can throw the noise marines in it. But that is a poor discount box. Yeah, I get your point. And so this is where I ran into the problem of just like the range is not large enough. There's only so many permutations that you can do. is the
• 09:00 - 09:30 actual answer. The one of everything, but you drop the second character for a rhino that's almost the exact same points and is another cheap kit, but it looks like a nice centerpiece. Except for the fact that the Rhino's $18 more, which puts us close to $300. Okay, but the Rhino kit is cheating because like the Rhino kit is technically more money when they throw it up for sale. Like, we can talk about this of like it's a 300year-old kit. They like do not give a about that model anymore. I'm with you, but like that's a tough one. I
• 09:30 - 10:00 think it could be doable, but that would be one of those you'd really have to fight with the the bean counters. Okay, my other question. Are tormentors able to be taken as fives versus tens? They are. I don't think. Is the kit built in the normal space marine way or is it the thousand sons problem where you can never have only five. You either get 10 or zero. I had thought about that, but GW's doesn't show the sprus. Don't you have the sprew behind you in a box? Yeah, but I'd have to like dig it out. This box is huge.
• 10:00 - 10:30 All right, through the power of editing, Eric has checked. And now we have a new list idea. Yeah, I just assumed that they were tens, but yeah, it seems like we can split it up into five. So, obviously, we're going to cut the cost in half when we look at it, which helps out quite a bit. So, cacophinist with the noise marines, the flawless blades, and five tormentors instead of 10 lets us also grab a rhino. And that puts us at like $272, so basically the same 38% off.
• 10:30 - 11:00 It's a little bit lower at $470 points, but Rhino is not really a great centerpiece, but it is something. Yeah, it gives you more variety than just a bunch of dudes foot slogging, which is the complaint you had for the original version. Yeah, basically like as fun as flawless blades are going to be, it just doesn't have that flare. And yeah, I think the Rhino is going to work pretty well with the Noise Marines. So, you get to experience some fun there while also getting a pretty good list that like you're not going to be too disappointed picking up two of these. Yeah, I don't
• 11:00 - 11:30 have an issue with any of the three lists we've talked about for EC here. I think as GW, the Land Raider's out. That's probably true. As much as I like that list, it's the most splashy fun one of Land Raiders. It's a problem for combat patrol. Yeah, the one of everything's out because that just you lose too much equity in sales later on possibly cuz like it's like this is your range. I'll just take four of them, right? I never have to buy a thing again. I still think you cap at three realistically. You buy three of them and you never have to buy. That's even
• 11:30 - 12:00 worse. Yeah, you buy three of them, you buy full grim, you're happy as can be. It doesn't do the uh EDH we designed it so you can upgrade. We've got you crapped kind of thing. But this new half rhino list that you put together by, you know, bringing the five tormentors in instead of full 10. Yeah. Yeah. Like two of this sounds amazing still. Three of this you probably do if you're brand new and like EC is your thing. You end up with three rhinos, but like you're new so you don't hate that idea as much. EC
• 12:00 - 12:30 even has the rhino detachment. Yeah. And I think there's going to be some players that are like two is fine. And then there's going to be others that are like me who are like, "Noise marines are the coolest thing ever." I'll take three of those. So yeah, this is this is pretty good. A bit low on the points, but like it's not that far off. I like it. What do you got for your first list, though? Are we sandbagging Admeck and making everybody wait for us to fix ADM mech? Oh, absolutely. And it's going to be even funnier when we don't actually do Admeck and we've just been bringing it up constantly. That would be so mean. Oh my god. I'm not doing that. I swear.
• 12:30 - 13:00 One of us only tells the truth. The other only tells lies. I'm evil. I'm not that evil. All right, let's talk about the evil Necrons and how GW's you. All right, so I made two versions of this. This is where I threw out the battle line thing. By the way, I planned on making a really cool thematic second Nekron combat patrol because we've been dealing with spearhead stuff. We've been hanging out in AOS land. We've been getting corrupted by having
• 13:00 - 13:30 fun. How dare a 40k player experience that? And like Space Marines get a bunch. So like why can't others? Yeah, but they're probably gonna get 45 more with this new secondary codeex But let's say I get a second one of Nekrons. My first choice was to go like wildly different and have this one focus on destroyers and flade ones to go for like a spooky neckron list, right? Cuz the current Nekron is the big colossus stalker thingy. I forget what it's called. You get a Doomstalker. It's very
• 13:30 - 14:00 basic. It's the Nekron Warriors, the Doomstalker. You do still get the score packs because they were in the intro box last edition and they're not a great value because of that. So, they easily slot into this. I like that combat patrol. It's not the best discount, but it's solid combat patrol. So, like having something to complement it in a different direction. Yeah. So, I was playing around trying to do a neat list and uh first of all, Fade ones are criminally priced. I can't explain how criminally priced they are. So, I was
• 14:00 - 14:30 already ready to throw out my budget issues because like the official Flade 1 price for how that unit is is wild. Yeah. Looking at this, you've got two Flade ones immediately given that the price that this is all going to end up, you have to cut one of them. They're not going to let you do it. Yeah. However, I know for a fact no one has ever bought a Fade One kit. That new kit sold like zero goddamn copies because they made it way too expensive. So, I'm going to ignore the pricing issue with the flade
• 14:30 - 15:00 ones for right now because they should have come 10 in a box for the same price. Really? I mean, I don't know. They're they're temporarily out of stock on the website, so it must have sold well enough because half of Nekrons being out of stock at any given point in time is news. All right. Yeah, we know that price is not a consideration. Then I did three score pack because again to GW, this is a free ad. They don't care. That makes up for the fade ones being overpriced. Scorpex being from the intro box last edition are are like literally worthless. Then I did the Oidian
• 15:00 - 15:30 destroyers to get a little bit of extra splash in there. They're again another like we're talking about all of these units are sub 100 point units. So when you're looking at the amount of units in this box, they are crazy cheap. We also get one Locust Heavy Destroyer to act as a pseudo centerpiece with one of our HQs here. If you're in destroyer/blade ones, there's no centerpiece type unit. That makes sense. I think it's fine though. Like with the destroyers, it's an interesting enough take on the army that
• 15:30 - 16:00 it's not just like blleh. Yeah, they they're unique. They will draw the eye. I think this will work well. So then character-wise, this is where we run into my issue. I threw in a hex mark destroyer because I literally had to keep throwing points at this thing to hit 500 points. Every single thing in this box, we are not to 500 points yet. This is 420 so far. Destroyers aren't worth very much in the current game. It's not like flade ones were really helping you either. No, they're not. We're in like admech tier. Then the last thing and the first thing I threw in the list because I was like, this is what
• 16:00 - 16:30 we're basing this on is a scorp lord. And I was like, we never see anything other than like a basic overlord in any combo box. And I had forgotten why, but I was like, I want to have a scorpek lord. Let's get something a little spicy in here and have people go, "Ooh, wow. Look at that dude. He's cool." Right. And like that lets you have the Scorp destroyers cuz he leads them which was like, "Oh, let's base it around destroyers." I get the thought process. Very cool. Yeah, we've got Annihilation Legion that we can put this into subfaction-wise from a like what the
• 16:30 - 17:00 theme of the army is. Everything is working out. Like this list looks fantastic other than the fact that it's pretty expensive. But that's the fault of the Flade One kit. I mean, it's a fault of a lot of them, but the Flade one is like take one of those out and we're still almost 40% discount. And that's also ignoring the problem with the lord. Yeah. So, the reason that every single thing only has a normal overlord. If I were to search GW's website for a scorp lord and try and buy it and figure out the price of it, you
• 17:00 - 17:30 cannot. The scorpek lord suffers from the old indominous sprew issue. It's on a sprew with a reanimator, a plasmancer, and two cryptothrals and can't be taken off that sprew. It's like scattered throughout the sprew. So, it's the uh Nekron's Royal Court. So, it's $1275. Yeah. And honestly, when I was looking at it, I was like, these thematically are pulling different directions. Like, either the Scorp Lord is a total waste for one direction I would want to pull or the plasmaner, the reanimator, the
• 17:30 - 18:00 cryptothrals are like all way wrong for this list. So, I can't rebuild from this starting point and have it make any sense to myself for like my thematic list I'm going for. So, after I threw out all that hard work, I decided to go back and say, I'm still doing Nekrons. Are we just going to give up on destroyers? Cuz like points, cost, all that nonsense. It's just too much. Yeah, the alternative is I go with a Locust Destroyer Lord, which is like a finecast upgrade sprew on a old kit. I was like, not happening. That makes sense. I'm not
• 18:00 - 18:30 surprised, but yeah. So until locusts get upgraded to like not have the green rods and all that jazz, it's just not happening. All right. So different direction. I decided we would do failins. The obese failins or however you're supposed to pronounce that. I am not going to pronounce it right. Today we're calling it the failins list. So this one has two vehicles. Cool. Two vehicles is a lot for a combat patrol. Luckily their vehicles are ass this edition. So we're in okay shape here. I
• 18:30 - 19:00 don't know, man. And if you add them up, it's pretty close to the mind raider. The stalker could at least shoot something and actually blow it up. But we started the list off with a catacomb command barge to have something as a spicier lead. Again, I don't just want a foot overlord. Yeah, the command barge is a pretty cool model. Like it's it's a unique style. So yeah, I could see that. I'm not sure it's really like a centerpiece, though. And if we're going for the failank Nekrons, like you do need like it's overlord units, triarch units, and lichgards, right? Like that's
• 19:00 - 19:30 what gets buffed by it. You got to have some lich guards. Yeah. Yeah. So, we have the catacomb command barge to act as our overlord unit. We've got our lich guard here to act as lichguard unit obviously. Or you could build them as the tri pritorians, but I'm saying the official one is lich guards. I threw in five immortals because they are battle line and they haven't been in any combo boxes for a while now. So, I figured they'd be more spicy than just throwing in nekron warriors. Sure, it is a lower count of models, but this will feel like a very elite combat patrol because of
• 19:30 - 20:00 the double vehicle, so it's fine. And then I moved on to have a Royal Warden just because from GW standpoint, the Royal Warden is a really free addin here. It was in all the combo stuff last edition. It's worth like $0 on eBay. They're not really worried about you getting a free Royal Warden out of a deal here. And we've got points to spare. And then I'm using a Triarch Stalker, which is obviously a Triarch unit to finish the list off. And this is our second vehicle. It adds a really cool looking centerpiece. And it's one
• 20:00 - 20:30 that you don't see often because it's not great. No, it's not particularly great. It's a cool centerpiece, but it's also not like overwhelming. It'll go pretty well with the Command Barge as well. Like the two together will be like, "Ooh, look at that." So this as it stands is only 435 points. That's how non- elite these two vehicles are. I mean, yeah. Like they're also only like $60. Yeah, it's only a 36% discount box. This is totally normal. Like this is like dead nut center for the decent combat patrols. So the bonus points here
• 20:30 - 21:00 is this is the cheapest way to build this. You can alt build it and have it be 520 points if you make your CCB instead be an annihilation barge and you put your overlord as the foot overlord, which is how you can set that kit up if you want. And then we can alt build the immortals as death marks if we want, but I'm not even saying we're doing that. We're just keeping them in as immortals. But you can alt build your lichguard as triarch pritorians and that's another point increase. And that ends up being like 520 points total. And that does
• 21:00 - 21:30 also show that this kit expands out quite well and the fact that your royal warden tax is going to start to suck. So like two or three of this is a very viable purchase. Like any new person would still get play out of three of these. The Royal Warden is definitely a loss, but you'll still be getting a discount if you want everything else. Yeah, I definitely see two. Three, you start like, do I really want to go that heavy into this style of the vehicles? Three really depends if you want the third Triarch Stalker. But the fact that
• 21:30 - 22:00 it's like an available option for those players. I mean, that's kind of perfect for allowing to have good in multiples. And I think this does a pretty good job of complenting the current combat patrol in like a different style. Yeah, it looks wildly different for starters, which is really nice because that was my point was like I want that give you options feel like that spearhead is doing with the secondary spearheads now of like you can walk up know you want to get into necrons and go whoa look at all of my options. It's like I'm treated
• 22:00 - 22:30 like I'm not an NPC faction. Yeah, that is pretty cool. Yeah, I really like this version of whatever that faction is. So, I want that instead of having to like, oh, that looks kind of neat. I wonder what else they have. So yeah, I think that works pretty well, dude. Definitely substantially more uh palatable than the other list they were trying to put together. All right, Eric. So getting into yours, like which of the new cotes did you decide you wanted to like try out next after doing EC? Maybe World Eaters. They've got a really nice new combat patrol that I like. It's even got
• 22:30 - 23:00 that demon prince. I swear they would never put in one. It's a huge win. It is actually a huge win. Are you like going to try to do better than that? Or the Death Guard one that includes a rhino now as a centerpiece? We're back to actually getting centerpieces and combat patrols. No, no, I I didn't go with that one either, but that one was kind of an inspiration of kicking around the idea of putting a rhino or, you know, a tank of some sort in cuz it's like, ooh, they do that again. I'm in. Uh, no, no, I figured we always have to have a space marine. So, which successor? Space Wolves because of their new update. Nah,
• 23:00 - 23:30 Space Wolves. I appreciate you. I'm happy for you. It must be nice having models that are three years newer than Eric's entire range that have to get updated for being too old. Yeah. Uh, no, no. I went a little bit off into the weeds. So, uh, Salamanders is a thing. Apparently, they are unfortunately shown with a codeex coming. Yeah. Somehow, somehow someway because we live in the darkest timeline. We do. We do. So, dude, this one's tough
• 23:30 - 24:00 for a bunch of reasons cuz like Salamanders doesn't have their own like a bunch of custom units right now. They've got two characters in an upgrade sprew as they should and maybe not even that. They should just be I want to have this be the flavor of my generic space marines like it works in every single other faction in this game. Yeah. One of the uh characters I think it might be fine cast or something like that. Correct. One is very old. Yes. Yeah. So, it was like, okay, the hell does salamanders do? cuz like there's some expectation that they're getting a
• 24:00 - 24:30 codeex, right? So like what are they going to do with it? Obviously they're going to have new models. They're probably going to light Elar Children on fire. Yeah. So I was like, "Oh well, given our current limitations, what's possible?" And uh Okay, I got a couple lists here that I'm not sure and I kind of want to talk through with you on this one. Let's see if we can't fix it cuz salamanders was where I got the Land Raider idea and pushed it into EC cuz it was super cool. Let's do it. Wait, is the Land Raider? Okay, so spoilers for our first list here. There's a Land
• 24:30 - 25:00 Raider Redeemer. Isn't that the one that has a Forge World resin upgrade sprew to make it? Is it? One of them does. I thought that was the Crusader. I never can keep the Land Raider straight. They are literally a gun option. I'll believe you. One of them has a resin upgrade sprew. No, it looks like this is sprew. Yeah. No, the Crusader also. Maybe it's one of the other. Yeah, there's there's more options. Never mind. We've avoided the worst case scenario here. Yeah, it's not dead on arrival for that reason at least. I still don't think you're getting away with a Land Raider in a
• 25:00 - 25:30 combat patrol. It's just too much vehicle. This one is an almost 300 point vehicle. Ain't no way. I know. Ain't no way. That's so cool though cuz it's like it's like putting gas in a combat patrol. And that's awesome. No. No. All right, fine. Since we can't do the Land Raider, what if we do a dreadnot? Is that you think that one might be okay? They've done redemptors in the past and stuff, so I don't have an issue with it like up front. All right, so dread knots. We've got a couple options. The
• 25:30 - 26:00 uh redemptor dread I think has been in something like that would be fine. I actually kind of like the redemptor dread and honestly the heavy flamer might be slightly better, but let's try out the brutalis dreadnot. It's got the like chest meltas. Yeah. Yeah. You get you get your uh melta nipples. Yeah. It's got the same styling of like bulky salamandery kind of thing going on there. So, okay. That's going to be like that's our centerpiece. That's our draw. That's what we want to do here. Absolutely. But at the same time, there are several units that are like these
• 26:00 - 26:30 are salamander units. So, we've got like the aggressors with the flamestorm gauntlets. That is absolutely the first thing I would put in the list. Those were like nailed it. And like salamanders was used to sell the aggressor artwise. It's always the like salamander one with the flamers. Hell yeah. And uh to go with them, I'm a big fan of the eradicator squads with their melta rifles. It feels right. Yeah. And we get more like fiery feel to the list. So I love everything so far. Yeah. And we're we're in like the more like kind
• 26:30 - 27:00 of bulky stuff. Like we're not jumping around, but you know, following that, let's grab a captain and grab his armor. Sure. It's more interesting than just grabbing like a generic captain. So for sure. And it'll go with your aggressors. So, you know, your aggressors are your centerpiece of the army. It goes with yeah, either of our elite infantry going on there, which is great. And then, uh, we're just running into the little issue of let's try and have battle line. Your neckrons ran into that earlier. This one's also running into it cuz like we
• 27:00 - 27:30 take some intercessors. Great. Five man of intercessors works. They feel so non-theatic with the rest of this list though. Like this went from salamanders to super generic just by why are there intercessors? It's still slanted salamanders, but you're no longer like this is salamanders, right? So, why are we going Intercessors and not Infernace? Cuz they both work in fivemans. They're like the same cost to make the same cost saleswise. Basically identical points. Yeah, the Infernace were like the go-to.
• 27:30 - 28:00 But couple issues. One, they're not battle line. We can get past that. Like there's enough infantry here. They're kind of like generic infantry. They're not technically battle line, but close enough. We can do it. But there's also the problem of the upgrade sprews. So every like special space marines has their upgrade sprew. And if you put them in the value, you have to like remove a whole kit. Like they replace a whole unit in a combat patrol because they
• 28:00 - 28:30 value these things at outrageous prices, right? Like the salamanders one sells for 30. Other ones are a bit more and whatever. And they put two of these in the kit and they go, "That's a $60 pair of tiny sprews that are shoulder pads and maybe a head or two." Yeah, there's some arms on like there's some hammers for salemanders which is cool. Like they are thematic. They help sell some stuff to like like it's cool. It's fine. It's just the value that they put it at is ridiculous. It's straight up laughable.
• 28:30 - 29:00 That's why when we did the last set of these, I said I'm not counting upgrade sprews as worth money because they are not right. So, like, yeah, let's kind of ignore it. But at the same time, as far as I can tell, and I've not personally tried it. I could be wrong here. The Infernace Squad would not be able to take advantage of these upgrades because the shoulders are sculpted cuz they're easy to build. As far as I know, that is the case. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Which it's not technically a problem.
• 29:00 - 29:30 Like you can just build the infernace squads and not put your salamander shoulders on. But at the same time, if you put it in the box because you have to put the upgrade sprew in the box, people are going to look at it and be like, "But what do I do with these shoulder pads? And why is it not like it just it doesn't compute?" Yes. There's a no-win situation. You're doing a salamander's box. They want to put the salamander sprew in because they made it and no one will buy these things. Yeah. Because they're a ludicrous price. I want to repeat this for anyone wondering. never pay for these piles of
• 29:30 - 30:00 But then you have the issue of now you have a useless sprew in the box because your shoulders won't be swappable and everything else is gravis. So it will only work with the big shoulder, right? So you can still do the swap out for the aggressors or you know the character. I believe the captain and gravis armor can switch out from some of it and that's that's cool, still useful, but like there's like tension in this list when you get to the nitty-gritty except for the fact that like when you look at it from a list view, it's like holy this is salamanders,
• 30:00 - 30:30 man. And it's not unreasonable. It's like $275. So like, yeah, it's on the upper end, you know, like 39% off, but that's fine. And you're still getting over 500 points easily with this where like I have to like scrape to get it in half of the Zenos factions. Yeah, to be fair, that's 274 ignoring the $30 or $60 upgrade. Yeah, but that thing. Just don't put it in the box. We've solved the issues. And then you get to play with your Infernace Marines instead of Intercessors. Yeah, the problem is like
• 30:30 - 31:00 they wouldn't. So like the realism sucks list is a captain in Gravis Armor, aggressors, eradicators. Maybe you get fancy with a Hell Blaster squad instead of Intercessors. That's the fun you get. It's wrong. Hell Blaster feels wrong. That is a disappointing list. That is a bad combat patrol and a lot of it comes down to like the way that they value those upgrade spurs. It's man. So, I think this is the list and probably Infernace Squads over Intercessors just
• 31:00 - 31:30 knowing that there could be problems with it. Maybe the reason they've got salamanders on the timeline as like a unique thing is they're doing all of the different space marines just so they have an excuse to fix the upgrade sprews. Hey, there you go. And it's not wasting a shitload of resources on yet more space marine crap. No, no, definitely not. Horus heresy already exists. It's over there. True, true, true, true. But all right, enough complaining about upgrade sprews. We've teased it enough. It's
• 31:30 - 32:00 time. All right, we've got Admeck. Imagine if you were like, "All right, we've got Tao or something." I promised we would one day fix ADMEch. I promised it on like the last two versions of this that Admeck was coming. I just wanted to see what GW would do to Admech first to hopefully fix them. They half fix them. This is not impossible anymore. It's just on the rougher side to get it approved on GW's end. But I'm taking inspiration here from the 9inth edition
• 32:00 - 32:30 Genesteeler Cults Combat Patrol. A combat patrol that said, "Fuck the rules. I have money to spare." It was good combat patrol. It was an amazing combat patrol. So good that some idiots might have two of them laying on the basement floor right now. Maybe three. I don't remember if I bought a third. But the point is with that as our benchmark here, you can do a lot in a combat patrol and get away with it. Adbeck actually needed an impossible amount previously. Like doesn't fit in a
• 32:30 - 33:00 box amount. Now we've got some decent ones. Yeah, there's definitely a bunch of different ways that you could go. So like the current one is fine. No, it's terrible. I think it's like 250 points if you put it together and it's not like a big discount for money, but like it's got some neat things. It's got the horses and the fly boys. The current ADM combat patrol is literally missing a vehicle. Yeah, their previous combat patrol was missing like one elite unit.
• 33:00 - 33:30 The one before that, which was half the price of a current combat patrol like 5 years ago, was great. Yeah, somewhere between that they were like, stop giving ade. So on this one, you're not trying to do like Nekron's a uh next to this one, we're going to have a secondary. This is just like fix that current My goal with this admech combat patrol is I shifted to a better timeline. We hopped one timeline over. Harambe is alive and I don't want to do
• 33:30 - 34:00 something I can't say on YouTube rather than show up at work in the morning to possibly horrendous events. So I use the same basis for the combat patrol as they currently have. There are still 10qatari in there. Whatever you want to build them as. I kept in the five fly boys and I kept in the three dogs. That's the core of the current combat patrol and I kept it the same. I think you're just missing uh a character and a vehicle. Yeah. Manipulus. But because Halo Creed is actually like really cool and everyone liked the like buffing the bots thing and all that. You've got that
• 34:00 - 34:30 angle and you've got the just generally doing the bot detachments so that they actually get all the rules of your army, but we're not getting into that. I am choosing to add in castin robots because they're adorable. And this will be a nice sampler platter of admech. You've gotqatari here. You've got your robots to represent the whole robot part of the army. Yeah. I mean to be fair at the same time like the robots are some of the better points for price in ade. Yes. GW wants you to have these because they're a good
• 34:30 - 35:00 discount to begin with. They're part of the better part of the ratio. So we have two of them in and then they've got a Datasmith obviously because that's how the robots work. Yeah. Like the kit itself comes with the two robots and the Datasmith. And because of that, I'm not really counting the Datasmith for our HQ here. And I wanted to just go with the classic Dominus cuz he looks sick. Like I just like the kit. I mean, I I think Manipul is still cool. But so this is going to look a lot like the current admech combat patrol. It's just it's a
• 35:00 - 35:30 complete combat patrol. Yeah. It's not even a crazy one. We scraped by with 510 points here. Yeah. Honestly, kind of surprising that you managed to do that. And I think it's like $35. Yes, it's a 44% discount, but again, this is a you can't fix ADM mech. The reason Genestealer Cults, as we've talked about on a previous episode, the reason it was a playable faction and not a joke is they had such a good combat patrol, it made up for how bad it was investing in the individual kits. You
• 35:30 - 36:00 realistically could do it. You could realistically buy three copies of the combat patrol and it undoes the damage of buying individual kits thereafter. Yeah, Admeck needs that. They're the worst army in the game from points per dollar. Honestly though, like the robots do a pretty good job. Like if you had to, you could drop the hounds. you're at like $455 and then it's only like $240 which is well within Yeah, GW would love you to buy that combat patrol but again this gets into the whole now it's
• 36:00 - 36:30 a shitty combat patrol from a discount standpoint which the point is to fix ADMEch to make it where a person could afford to play admech without putting two grand on the table. Yeah. Like I don't think it's a bad combat patrol from like that's a fine percentage off. It's just you've then already used up the like efficient points or dollar per point kind of thing, right? Exactly. So like your next upgrades are going to be you're going to spend a shitload of money. So like I'm with you. I think this is the right way of like if we're
• 36:30 - 37:00 going to make a better ad, let's do it like Gene Steelers was. It's not that different from what's currently on the shelf. From GW standpoint, this is possibly the least painful request for the fix. Like going through other variations on this, I wound up with several wildly different ones that worked and had different pros to them, but this one I think you could reasonably expect to get through. Yeah, I didn't try to shoot for the absolute moon here. I tried to fix everything in
• 37:00 - 37:30 a way that I think I could get through if I had to argue it. It's definitely one of those you're going to have to defend it. But yeah, it could be possible. But anyway, the list itself is an easy slam for two of these. The third one is iffy, but because it's admech, you still might pull the trigger on it. Again, it's one of those, do you want the centerpiece unit? So, like if you're that excited about having a bunch of robots in this case, I actually think it's the opposite because the robots are so cheap. You have to think about it of
• 37:30 - 38:00 do I want more dogs and bird boys because I would never buy that kit solo. That's true. Because they're like literally a point per dollar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very true. I think the hounds are they have at several points been worse than a point per dollar. I do not know if it is currently the case. I think they are right now. Yeah. Fan fuckingtastic. So that is actually an interesting thing cuz usually it is like do you want a bunch of the centerpiece model cuz like that's what's drawing you. But yeah, I guess in this case since the robots are
• 38:00 - 38:30 already such a solid deal as a separate kit, you would kind of want those other ones. And then like yeah, you're just you're also buying the the robots kind of thing. I could see three. Two is slam dunk though. Yeah, I think this helps fix the admech problem of now you can reasonly tell a new person like look, they're expensive. I can get you to like a 2,000 point army in a reasonable amount of money compared to other armies. But you have to know that long-term you're going to pay more. And that's a lot easier to tell someone
• 38:30 - 39:00 than, "Hey, before you try to buy anything, how do you feel about spending $1,500 to play the game?" Yeah, I think this one does a good job as well of like showing off the army. It does. It's a good spread of the different parts of the army. As much as I'm me on there being no other robots still, it does show everything off. You could swap either the bird boys or the sulfur hounds for the electro priest to like get a true seeing everything, but it really doesn't matter. That's all
• 39:00 - 39:30 interchangeable. They're all in that same shitty price range with terrible points. Yeah. And that's I remember trying to do this as well and I was like, I want to do the electro priest cuz they're cool. And it's like I managed to get to like 350 points. it. Yeah. There's a worse version of this where you swap the bots for two chickens and that is like worse in every single way other than the fact that ADM mech is so painfully expensive, right? It's just embarrassing what it takes. Like the true replacement for the robots I think was like a chicken and a tank.
• 39:30 - 40:00 Oh no. Admeck is painful. Yeah, I know. The chickens are ridiculous cuz they come in they're like singular. They're singular. They're so cheap pointwise and they're expensive. Yeah, I think this does a good job of showing a bunch of stuff off and like would really get people into admech, but man, I don't see it happening. I think we're not on that universe hop. Rob's dead, bro. So is my stocks. Hell yeah. Let's go. Race to the bottom
• 40:00 - 40:30 and possibly my career. We've got a Patreon. We've got a Patreon. Brett's going to be joining me. Don't curse me. All right, that does it for this week's episode, though. I hope you all enjoyed it. We are out of here. Sounds good.
• 40:30 - 41:00 Heat. Heat.
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