Elysian Tactics - Initial thoughts

Elysian Tactics - Initial thoughts

Even though I have plenty of models assembled and and enough to field an army I have decided I won't field an un-painted army. In light of this the army is still months away from being ready I have been thinking about some army lists and strategies.

Now I am not the most competitive player, but not completely fluffy either, falling somewhere in between these two extremes as I suppose a lot of players do.

For starters I do not like mixed armies, such as these so-call "Imperial soup' armies that are all the rage currently. I am not even very fond of mixing regiments. I have no issue including the odd inquisitor, assassin or auxilia troops, but you will never find me including a unit of Marines of any kind. And secondly I do like taking advantage of what I see as loopholes and mistakes in the rules. To give an Elysian example there is an order called Move and Fire which changes all the units weapons to assault. I feel that this was only designed to change Rapid Fire and Heavy weapons so you can fire them while advancing. But RAW it also changes grenades to assault, allowing each trooper to throw both a frag and a krak grenade as well as firing their usual weapon. I won't be doing this.

With the Elysians I plan to keep my army all the same regiment, especially as attached flyers gain the Elysian Drop Troopers Regiment Keyword. I have read that in the fluff Scions do work very closely with Elysians, but I don't really see any niche that they fill that Elysians cannot fill instead. I do have a large number of scions, and in fact the last game I played I used a 2000pt force with 3 flyers and the rest scions. Obligatory picture below. That is my initial set-up in the centre of the board.

Most of the scions were deepstriking of course so this is what I had on the table to start with. I got unlucky with deployment as my setup was in the middle of the board with my opponent having the corners. Also the game was killpoints and he had a stationary Cadian gunline. Suffice to say I lost.

So with the Elysians at 2000pts I am considering running a Brigade and a Battalion as I do like having a steady supply of command points. Also Elysians have cheap options for all the categories making Brigades easy to get, although some categories are quite limited in choice.

And Elysians can still use all the non-regiment specific Astra Militarum stratagems so can put all those command points to good use.

Having a Brigade and a Battalion is a minimum of 9 squads of Drop Troopers which seems like a lot, but is only 450pts without upgrades and they can all deepstrike. From there that gives a lot of options to round out the rest of the force.

4chan has a large section on Elsyian tactics which is well worth a read, but bear in mind that a lot of the stuff is outdated due to the AM codex and chapter approved. And while there are a lot of knowledgeable contributors, there are also contributors with less useful advice, and there if often no way to tell which advice is which.

I will go into specifics in my next posts, and will cover each unit I plan to include, and how I see them best being put to use, starting next week with Drop troopers, our only troops choice, and what the army will be built around. Also I have just ordered some standards, and plan to make some regimental standard bearers. So when they are complete expect a post about them too.