Background.
Employed only sparingly during the Great Crusade to breach enemy positions, the Mastodon saw increased use in the days of the Heresy as a fully armed and armoured transport capable of protecting its transported marines even against titans to a reasonable degree.
Strengths.
This is both a Lords of War entry in the force organisation chart, and possesses an incredible 40 spaces for transport up for grabs. Importantly, it can also take up to 2 dreadnoughts (taking 10 spaces each) in this capacity, making it very formidable for enemy armies.
It carries out its transport role very well with not just crazy Land Raider style armour, armoured ceramite, a whole slew of hull points, but dual void shields to boot. (Recall: even a war hound titan has only 2 void shields itself!).
Even without carrying anything, its presence in a game is very significant and entire armies and strategies could well be built around its use. Its weapons are formidable enough to be a headache for almost anything (granted, they're not destroyer strength though). Flamers, lascannons, meltas, they're all here!
As if that's not enough, if a unit occupies it, there are houses to snap shots when being charged at, catastrophic damage table rolls get a whopping -2 modifier, and if it survives it becomes a proper ruins with 2 entry points! This is very cool in my opinion and represents such a big structure turning in to a battlefield obstacle that can then be used tactically in subsequent firefights.
In terms of upgrades, the vox relay is a cool way to manipulate reserves for the army and punish the enemy for deep strike mishaps. Take if you want fliers on the board on turn 2. Otherwise, probably don't bother.
Weaknesses.
Destroyer weapons.
Builds.
Mastodon, super heavy command tank (720 points).
Look, you don't have to take any upgrades at all. But hey, you've invested a lot of points already, so why not a few more? I like both the relay vox and the sky reaper battery, but hesitate to sacrifice the sky reaper battery for the relay on accounts of the sky fire rule there (without knowing if the rest of the army includes fliers or not).
This could be just downright dirty with the right army. Consider the Iron Hands with Head of the Gorgon rite of war for instance. Or how about Ferrus Manus himself in an unbound list? Ferrus Manus *inside* the Mastodon? With air support? Good luck.
Employed only sparingly during the Great Crusade to breach enemy positions, the Mastodon saw increased use in the days of the Heresy as a fully armed and armoured transport capable of protecting its transported marines even against titans to a reasonable degree.
Strengths.
This is both a Lords of War entry in the force organisation chart, and possesses an incredible 40 spaces for transport up for grabs. Importantly, it can also take up to 2 dreadnoughts (taking 10 spaces each) in this capacity, making it very formidable for enemy armies.
It carries out its transport role very well with not just crazy Land Raider style armour, armoured ceramite, a whole slew of hull points, but dual void shields to boot. (Recall: even a war hound titan has only 2 void shields itself!).
Even without carrying anything, its presence in a game is very significant and entire armies and strategies could well be built around its use. Its weapons are formidable enough to be a headache for almost anything (granted, they're not destroyer strength though). Flamers, lascannons, meltas, they're all here!
As if that's not enough, if a unit occupies it, there are houses to snap shots when being charged at, catastrophic damage table rolls get a whopping -2 modifier, and if it survives it becomes a proper ruins with 2 entry points! This is very cool in my opinion and represents such a big structure turning in to a battlefield obstacle that can then be used tactically in subsequent firefights.
In terms of upgrades, the vox relay is a cool way to manipulate reserves for the army and punish the enemy for deep strike mishaps. Take if you want fliers on the board on turn 2. Otherwise, probably don't bother.
Weaknesses.
Destroyer weapons.
Builds.
Mastodon, super heavy command tank (720 points).
Look, you don't have to take any upgrades at all. But hey, you've invested a lot of points already, so why not a few more? I like both the relay vox and the sky reaper battery, but hesitate to sacrifice the sky reaper battery for the relay on accounts of the sky fire rule there (without knowing if the rest of the army includes fliers or not).
This could be just downright dirty with the right army. Consider the Iron Hands with Head of the Gorgon rite of war for instance. Or how about Ferrus Manus himself in an unbound list? Ferrus Manus *inside* the Mastodon? With air support? Good luck.
3 comments:
Can the alpha legion infiltrate this beast
The Mutable Tactics of the Alpha Legion only apply to marines with the Alpha Legion rule, not vehicles. Hence, they can not infiltrate it using those rules.
Guess that would have been pretty evil of you could do that
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