Tempestus Scions

I just bought the Tempest scions box, with a box of troops and an additional Taurox as my first 40k army.

I will be playing my first game this Saturday against a guy who will be playing Dark Eldar. He also got me into the hobby.

I picked this army because I was told there a fast army so I plan on outmaneuvering his DE, by using orders that give me fleet, and crusader to stay 1 step ahead of my opponent, then taking advantage of crusader to gain an advantage for sweeping advance rolls.

Anyone have any pointers for a person getting ready to play his first 40K game with this army?

thanks

Just enjoy yourself. You'll pick it up as you go along.

Any advice on what I'm for?

Like what do the DE bring to the table? What are their strengths and weaknesses compared to mine?

Also did I pick the wrong army to start 40k with?

You're not going to be outmaneuvering Dark Elda. Off the top of my head you can hug terrain and use Move through cover, but Scions are meant to Infiltrate and move reliably in cover, rather than move fast. You won't be anything as good as an army of fleet and fast skimmers, so don't try to play as something you're not.
Keep to cover, fire first with the units that have only a single viable target in range.
Remember that the sweet spot for Hot shots rapid firing is 9".
Remember that you have krak grenades.
And most importantly, remember to have fun.

So I should stick to cover, and single out targets.

Thanks for the advice. Is the flier a good buy?

>DE are lots of firepower from fragile troops in fragile transports
>Scions come out slightly on top for basic weaponry because of Armour penetration
>Scion have a better save that gets to be used
>Dark Eldar can access higher volume of shots
>Any dedicated DE melee unit will ruin you
>DE Raiders will probably kill your Tauroxes

If he goes first, your concern is how to survive the first turn attack.
If you go first, your concern is how to infiltrate your scions to get as close to him as you can and kill him first.

Are you going to use the Hellrain Brigade formation rules from the Start Collecting box?

Yes. But I doubt the rules will do me any good, as a dead unit in reserves is no good to me.

All of this is good save for the fact that scions don't get to infiltrate. You do however, get to have an entire army deep strike and you can use this maneuver that the codex astartes calls steel rain, to get "relatively" cheap suicide squads of melta scions right on top of high priority targets. Taurox Primes can even be given psuedo-locator beacons to avoid the scatter part of the deep strike, though it's a mixed bag with that. If anything I'd say if you want to run a good Tempestus army, double up on CADS for more command squads, cause you live and die by the orders you issue each turn. Nothing saved my bacon more then some twin-linked plasma shots or sniper hot-shots killing a MC when I needed it.

Should I equip my Tauroxs with battle cannons, or gatling guns?

The most important thing when starting out with this hobby, just have fun! Try having fun while painting, try to have fun while gaming. To get a team with über rules, but no interest in the team what so ever, is a dead end for any gamer.

Missile Launchers, it's got the most versatility out of the bunch since it's exactly what it says. Battle-cannon is a dumbed down version of the Leman Russ Battle Cannon, and the same for the gatling cannon. Though if you want to use the gatling cannon remember to keep the volley guns for 14 TL shots and only ever take 2. Any more becomes redundant. Taurox Primes work best bare or as missile primes.

All of advice given so far is good.
I play Tempestsus as well, and I love them.
So simple tips:
>Use terrain
You get cover while using them and it makes it harder for you opponent to shoot and charge into you.
>Specialize
Each squad should be good at one job. Don't try and mix and match special weapons. For example: take two Meltas and hunt tanks and transports with them. Take hotshot volley guns and camp objectives with them. Etc.
>Your Tauroxes are you mobility
Outside of deep striking where you need to go, they Taurox is your delivery device. It's fast, and granted, paper mache, but it's there to get your scions to where they need to be.
>You are not a close combat army
You might be able to hold your own against some troops against your command squads, but your advantage is in shooting. Stay out of charge range as much as possible, and make them come to you as you dump shots on them as much as possible. Use terrain to cut them off.
>Last but not least
Have fun. And welcome to the hobby :)

Not who you responded to, but the flier is...different. It's there to either get your troops the backfield, or be a fire magnet. It's not going to rain down hell or be a game breaker, but it can be a nice addition.
Truthfully, don't worry about it right now.

How are Tempestus as stand alone army anyway? I like the looks a lot, but if the playstyle is really one dimensional I wont bother with them.

Reasonable. They can't really stand up to any dedicated effort to squash them, but they are pretty good shooters and fairly mobile, the combination of which makes them nice at flexible reaction and spot removal.
The larger the game, the more they suffer from their limited selection and lack of heavy assets.

At larger games, indeed they suffer from dealing damage on a large scale. That's when you decide to ally in Imperial Knights or Space Marine forces.
Fluff wise I'm more impartial to Knights.
Not only that, but they make great fire magnets that allow your troops to get to where they need to be and hold their own.

You are gonna suffer a terrible lose, but please don't be a butthurt faggot like some of my former playgroup buddies and quit after you have lost the first few games.

You have orders that allow your command squads to ignore cover saves. His transports are doomed

I don't know about you, but it looks like you bought some Stormtroopers for your Imperial Guard army. And that's fine.

What, you don't like an army of "Big Boy Toy" soldiers?

Militarum Tempestus and Dark Eldar have a similar playstyle, in that they are based around hitting specific targets and doing their damage before they can be shot back at, so prepare for an interesting mindgame as you both try to out alpha-strike each other.

theyre crazy fast, have lots of cover saves, crazy amounts of poison (that the DE player will normally groan about against guard) and will use all sorts of knife eared hedonistic xenos trickery against you.

You have guns, deep strike, and also guns. You will live and die by your orders. Not crusader or fleet, but your firepower boosting ones. Never underestimate ignores cover or sniping hell guns. Especially ignores cover. Eldar in general heavily rely on it.

As for guns, make heavy use of volley, melta, and plasma. Theyre all good but at different jobs. Figuring out how to tool up squads to make the most of these weapons is difficult but you will figure it out.

Thanks for the advice guys.

I'm gonna eventually depend on allies to make my army work at higher points levels. How many points should my army be before allies become mandatory?

Are knights the way to go for allies?

I would heavily suggest regular IG for allies (or straight up rolling the stormtroopers into the IG army)

Guard takes care of your main weaknesses, mainly numbers and long range firepower. You should be looking to transition to some other main force with the storm troopers as the auxiliary at about a 1,000pts. Simply because stormtroopers have to be taken in single squads for the stormtrooper codex, while IG can take stormtroopers in platoons for their elite choice (hilariously, you can take almost twice as many stormtroopers as elites for an IG army as you could troops for your stormtrooper army)

On top of that, I honestly feel the IG orders are better than the stormtrooper ones, as they give you access to first rank fire, second rank fire, Bring it down, Forward for the emperor, and Fire on my target, all excellent orders. Forward for the emperor is especially nice for stormtroopers as it allows you to fire and then spread out after deep striking, a very important tactic to keep them alive.

Tempestus have a lot of similarities in overall play style to Dark Eldar

Both armies rely on a very well executed plan.

You have deep strike on almost everything and access to tons of special weapons, and order that will make or break your army.

He will have batshit fast jinking transports with lots of saves and dice.

If either of you fucks up, there is no coming back.

As for ways to expand, consider what you want.

>Option 1: Inquisition
The Inquisition can bring a lot to a scion army, from psychic support, to cheap troops, to long range firepower, reliable armor, and long range firepower. They are as elite or mundane as you want them to be.

The minimum amount of models needed to start inquisition allies is just one - an inquisitor.

>Option 2: Astra Militarum
Your Tempestus are like special forces troops, but these are the just the regular dudes. But you can get a lot of them! Going this route will allow you to recover more from mistakes, but you lose some of the flavor.

You need a lot of models for AM usually.

>Option 3: Pure Tempestus
You may struggle, but your victories will be all the sweeter.

Possible allies:
>Imperial Knights
Costly, but brings a lot to the table. He's fast, fairly durable and decently shooty, with a devastating punch in melee. Have your scions ward off stuff that wants to bind him in melee while he supports your advance and acts as a giant ditraction/troubleshooter.
>Inquisition
ALL the shenanigans. Lots of tricks, few of them straightforwards. The inquisition does little to shore up your weaknesses, but rather bolsters your strength.
>Assassins
Yes.
>Imperial Guard
Covers your weaknesses well, but at that point you might as well play guard with TS allies.
>AdMech
Lots of lovely guns on a number of surprisingly tough units, but they don't really want to be an allied force.

You forgot space marines. Iron Hands are durable as fuck and will help compliment Scions.

SM don't really need the Scions for DS murder, they got plenty of that on their own.
And if you bring a small SM allied contingent, you probably lack the points to really grab the toys that make SM interesting in the first place.

Centurions are cheap as fuck and hit like trucks.

Any Xenos allies worth taking?

holy shit is that actual good advice from imperial propaganda?

IoM is pretty sound when it comes to anything but chaos

Consider maybe Tau for extra DS shenanigans but on a smaller scale. Usually anything you need for your Scions can be filled by any of the other Imperial armies.

>Scions
>Xenos
you fucking what

No
i know that is boring, but really, unless you are going with a theme army IoM can do everything you get from xenos but better because battle bros.

>Imperial guard
Gives you numbers and long range guns to play around with

>inquisition
An inquisitor is always nice for all the specialist gear they can carry and the elite choices are convenient for some cc durability

>Sisters of Battle
Heavily armoured bolter bitches and priests to back them up, but fuck that noise, you really take these allies to get the Exorcist Tank and everything else is just a nice bonus.

>assassins
If you thought playing tempestus was placing all of the eggs in one basket the assassin basket has exploding eggs with spikes and their basket is made out of wet tissue paper

>knights
A single devestating fire magnet that can take out most of an army on its own but without propper support will get focused down by the enemy

>
That's heresy, son.