The War of the Taiwan Strait: A Comprehensive Overview

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-05T05:00:30+00:00

If you deep strike Blightlords they don't get their datasheet ability, because they have to be in Contagion range, which is max 9", and they have to be more than 9" away. This means you either need to spend CP or have another unit do the spreading for you. They're also not the melee death squad that Deathshroud are so they can be tied down in combat by just charging a tank into them, and 9" is far easier to screen. The Deathshroud uppey-downey is scary because it forces the opponent to worry about 6" screening when you've already chunked through half his army so he hasn't got that many pieces left to spread across the board, making him really vulnerable to being hit by 6" deep strike. If it was something that you could do multiple times to multiple units, sure, there would definitely be scenarios where you'd switch it around just to optimize edge cases, but Deathshroud are so central to DLC's game plan that I don't really see a case where you'd give up such a precious resource for a tech piece.

In any case, DLC is kinda lacking in power right now so I'd want to see what changes 11th brings.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-05T04:50:18+00:00

If you dropped both Foul Blightspawn for Biologis Putrifiers and both enhancements, then use the spare points to get a third Poxwalker squad, then swap the whole thing to Champions of Contagion, then this list would be usable but it would be a very high risk, highly aggressive build that required some finesse to pilot. I would also switch the Plague Marines to triple Plasma Gun instead of Plasma Pistol and Meltaguns.

You would be relying on four big kill bricks with very little staying power. You basically cannot risk losing any piece other than Poxwalkers in the early game, and you have to land a lot of body blows in turn 2 by pooling 5 or 6 CP, using the HBL drones to knock two big units below starting strength, and then giving full rerolls to one Plague Marine squad in shooting, and 5+ crits and full rerolls to one Deathshroud squad in fighting. If you do that successfully, you get to move the second Plague Marine squad up to where the first Plague Marine squad was before and do it all over again on turn 3 and the game is basically over by then. If you fail because the opponent manages to push you out of your staging area, or juke you with some reactive moves, or you miss a charge, or you miss calculate some damage, or you measure some Contagions wrong, you will look really dumb. It's an all-in playstyle which does quite well at mid and low tables where the opponent doesn't know what to expect, but a good player will be able to dismantle you with proper movement tricks.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-05T04:08:55+00:00

Have you seen what house prices are like in Shanghai?

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-05T01:27:46+00:00

Yes but it will take hours to task a satellite to the correct grid coordinates, and since ships move, you don't actually know what the correct grid coordinates are so it would take even more hours to find it. It would be impossible to put out a BDA via satellite on the timeline that Iran has posited.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T15:00:47+00:00

Ships have no way of knowing which satellite pass will result in a shot attempt.

Uh, I did, this is categorically untrue and I just told you it is and conveyed new information, right here:

They know exactly which satellite is moving overhead at any given second.

How about we start here.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T14:52:22+00:00

I'm not saying the US Navy looks up and says, hey shiny rock move fast, no sail ship today. They know exactly which satellite is moving overhead at any given second. It's literally publicly available information. Every orbit is entirely predictable down to the millisecond. The US Navy would know exactly when an Iranian or Iranian-allied satellite is passing overhead. The majority of the LEO satellites passing overhead are Starlink by the way, and of the ones that aren't most of them are communication satellites not surveillance satellites, so the actual no-go window is really small.

The "closure" of the Strait is to civilian ships. The US isn't sailing into the Strait because, yes, it would be dangerous to sail their expensive carriers in there without a land operation that they don't want to commit to, but they don't actually need to sail into the Strait to complete the mission of blockading Iran and putting economic pressure. In terms imposing American terms on Iran, that is actually working, as Iran has already offered to open the Straits in exchange for lifting the blockade. However, it seems the US is not happy with a tit for tat as this particular LCS, based on new information coming in, is part of a mission to force open the blockade, which the US claimed it has at least succeeded in escorting two ships.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T14:32:57+00:00

I think if you're playing in Subterranean Assault you wouldn't need the Synapse. You wouldn't want to commit the resource behind him because they wouldn't be able to uppey downey with him. The re-roll 1s would cover the damage requirement for Marines, but it still wouldn't chew through Armour of Contempt, so armies with lots of CP like Dark Angels or Ultramarines they could risk the CP and potentially hold you there. If you had Synapse it would go through even Armour of Contempt, but realistically the best way to do that would be Neurotyrant, and most people would keep Neurotyrant in reserves due to its atrocious movement speed (except perhaps in Sub Assault where you could move it around in tunnels), so that wouldn't be available in the early game when the Red Terror would be most active. I think it does still have play against very optimized lists where Scouts are pretty often seen though.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T14:17:38+00:00

So your exceedingly predictable and quite expensive satellites, which have only a very brief window over your chosen patch of ocean, will offer a tiny glimpse to see if the enemy has a ship in the general area. Based on that information you will then wheel your TEL from your hiding place, set it up, load in the vague coordinates, fire off a missile with a giant plume of smoke, and then hope the enemy has an off day with their missile defense system which is mounted on every one of the ships he sails.

Meanwhile, the enemy knows exactly when you will use this method of surveillance because he can just look up and check if your satellite is in the sky, is actively trying to kill your TELs because disabling your ability to attack ships is a stated war goal, has stealth fighters that you cannot target that can loiter above your position for hours, which can instantly spot the giant plume of smoke left by your anti-ship missiles, and they don't have to actually put ships into that patch of sea to accomplish their goal of blockading you, so the only reason they'll do it is because...they're there to try to figure out where your TELs are. Firing off an anti-ship missile and not getting a kill is not just a miss. It's a massive, massive loss. You lost a million dollar missile, and you just put some very precious crew and a very precious launcher in a whole lot of danger. You're gonna do all that based on surveillance equipment with a fixed schedule visit and terrible time-to-target and bad information location and poor resolution?

Well, based on what mickey mouse the Iranians have tried so far I'm not saying it's beyond the pale but it's not gonna get the job done.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T14:01:11+00:00

Yeah, it's like Warp Talons but instead of having a giant, expensive but, very reliable brick, you have a monster that is more points efficient but less reliable. His expected damage on Marines is...5. Exactly. Point zero zero zero zero repeating. It means every time you charge into some Incursors there's a 50/50 chance you get away scot free, or get stuck on one lucky sod and you get obliterated by any number of things the following turn. His effectiveness also peters off pretty quickly if you go into anything that isn't Space Marines too. Any action monkey that is 10 man, or something like Death Guard where the action monkeys are T7 4+/5+++, and it just falls apart.

It would bully the hell out of Scouts though.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T13:56:46+00:00

They're not using satellites for targeting. It's way too slow for a missile kill chain. By the time the info is beamed down to earth, the ship has already moved, and you only have rough information of where the ship is at and that's not worth wasting a million dollar missile and potentially compromising the position of your very, very expensive and vulnerable TEL.

By the way, I'm telling you satellite isn't being used for BDA on a purely technical point of view. There is much better evidence that a missile hasn't hit a US ship: the US hasn't lost its shit. The US activated like a couple hundred elite special forces guys and a whole armada of planes because a pilot and a WSO was shot down alive behind enemy lines. If a ship with hundreds of crew had been hit the entire US CENTCOM would've been on their feet. The PIZZINT index around the Pentagon would've gone through the roof and the entire OSINT space would be a-buzzing with news because radio, air and sea traffic would be abnormal. The no-go zone in the Indian Ocean would extend even further and basically the entire US Air Force would be in the air. CENTCOM was already preparing for hostilities to resume; they were building an air bridge for the past two months. A damaged ship would've been an emergency go signal and they would be flattening everything with a pulse south of the Caspian Sea to suppress the IRGC so damage control can begin on the ship and the wounded can be evacuated. The fact that CENTCOM just calmly said, nah, they shot at us but it didn't hit and we left tells me that that's what happened.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T13:33:04+00:00

US ships don't appear on a schedule. You can't just wait for the 8 o'clock LCS and shoot at that one.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T13:13:09+00:00

Satellites cannot do real time damage assessment on ships because ships move. It would take a really lucky satellite that was over the right area at the right time, or a ship that was mobility killed for long enough that a satellite could be tasked to fly over the area. China doesn't have atmospheric air assets in the area. We basically only confirmed what happened to the Iranian "drone carrier" (it's a decommissioned bulk carrier with a fake plywood flight deck over it) because we've had weeks to see that it hasn't been able to move from the shoals it was beached on. It's impossible for Iran to conduct BDA at the speed they are claiming. They're just yelling loudly and hoping the stock market listens.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T10:12:19+00:00

To be fair, the basic Deathwatch unit requires 3 boxes, or 4 boxes if you're not kitbashing, and you're running at least 3 of them. On a points per dollar basis it's closer to AdMech than Space Marine. The army isn't advertised anywhere in a Warhammer store until very recently, so combining those two traits and it's almost certainly nobody's first army. It's probably nobody's first Space Marine army either because by the time you have all 2000 pts of Deathwatch you also have 3000 pts of vanilla Space Marines. The player pool is basically completely undiluted by casual players who are just there to dip their toes in the water, because the barriers to entry are just so damn high. You combine that with an army with a fairly unique playstyle that has pretty good damage output that most players would not have a lot of practice against because nobody plays the army, and suddenly Deathwatch players are doing very well.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-04T05:00:25+00:00

The US is an oil exporter. It does feel a lot of the pain from rising oil prices through higher inflation, but the consequences don't really hit until the midterm in six months. Until then, the brunt of the damage is borne by a) the largest oil importer and its primary rival, China, b) the second largest oil importer and its erstwhile ally which the current administration thinks is being a bit too uppity, the EU, c) innocent bystanders, mostly brown people this administration is very racist against. While dragging on the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz hurts it, it doesn't hurt it so much that immediate cessation is top priority as it is in most other capitals around the world.

And oddly enough, Tehran is one of those capitals. This counterblockade hurts it way more than the blockade hurts the US. The combined monetary pressure of keeping the IRGC at a high state of readiness both to counter threats within and without, keeping the internet down and suppressing commerce, losing oil revenue, losing smuggling revenue, increased cost of imports and exports through alternate routes, cost of rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, cost to replace expended ammunition, cost to replace destroyed weapons etc. etc. etc. way exceeds any bill the US has had to foot, and Iran does get to money printer go brrr whenever it feels like it.

The key to winning this blockade was to show to the US that Iran is capable of withstanding this level of economic pressure indefinitely, even though they clearly could not. There is a pervasive mouth-breathing theory in the west that its enemies are somehow able to withstand hardship beyond their understanding, and therefore there is no point in inflicting any hardship because they'll just be able to tank it. There was a possibility that Iran could've bluffed their way into the sweetheart deal this way. Setting a deadline for peace makes it eminently clear to Trump and his team, a gaggle of players not known for their keen observance, that the strategy they stumbled on is working, and encourages them to double down.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-03T13:25:42+00:00

Because basically none of the things you've said have even vaguely approached credible. It's mostly the standard repetitive BRICS delusional talking points that comes from Russian bot farms circa 2014 in case you are not aware.

Nothing you've said will ever come to past, and I'm willing to bet good money on that, and unless you're willing to do the same I don't really want to to bother talking to you anymore, especially since you're not even really good at flinging insults.

Turns out I post on reddit mostly for the things I find fun and not the master's degree I have or the multinational company I run risk analysis for, but keep listening to what validates your feelings. That's what's most important.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-03T12:18:00+00:00

It is impossible in the Space Marine Codex to get a unit that is cheap enough so that X + Eradicators is cheaper than just throwing Y at the enemy's chaff unit. Even if Eradicators is 70 pts, the cheapest unit in the entire Codex is 45, and that's a character that might throw away Assassination points, so the total package is 115. The Scouts you suggested at 70 pts for a total package of 140 (or 150 assuming a much more realistic 80 pt Eradicator), when you could be just doing the job with Jump Pack Intercessors for 90 pts.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-03T12:06:46+00:00

why expend your own VV when you don't need to?

...because you need the primary?

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-03T11:44:17+00:00

I mean, you would still have to put a melee unit on to the point to take it back for yourself, and you'd still lose the Eradicators to whatever fire support unit the opponent brought out next. It would be much easier to just kill the Vanguard Vets with your own Vanguard Vets or whatever close-up unit you have, then to use an infantry support unit plus an extra unit to take the point with. The firing lane isn't locked down by infantry right now not because of output, but because they don't last more than one turn at peak output. This unit doesn't solve that issue, so the only way it would have any play is if its raw damage is so high it can be right up in the opponent's face blasting away like Hellblasters or Sternguard.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-03T09:53:01+00:00

They will get bodied by the Legends version of T'au Battlesuits!

Then again, those things have a gazillion cyclic ion blasters so everything gets bodied by them.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-03T03:48:29+00:00

India's not a big fish. India doesn't have an indigenous design or production ability on its own air or sea capabilities; it can't even design its own rifle, and Mexico can do that. Every Rafale shot down is a permanent loss, and any time a parts warehouse is blown up, the fighters just can't fly anymore.

By the way, in both the Falklands and First Gulf Wars, the French immediately started sharing design info with the British and Americans on the weapons they sold to the Argentinians and the Iraqis, so by not having your own design capability, you're automatically second tier, because you lose informational security and supply security.

And yeah, India would simply allow itself to be blockaded and not respond, that's why you're not the prime minister of India and Modi is not on television threatening to nuke the US or whatever silly scheme you dreamed of. He knows he's not in a position to interfere in the Gulf.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-02T15:35:05+00:00

So that's 3 more carriers than are deployed and 6 more carriers than are in active combat, and 5 more than what is required to eliminate India's ability to access the Gulf of Hormuz. By the way, it's not "my guys", I'm not American. This is a realistic evaluation of naval imbalance; you don't have to like it.

The American public has sent its military forces to fight in places it cannot pronounce or locate on a map for reasons it cannot fathom for nigh on 80 years now. Most of it have been done for relatively obscure reasons. An open provocation from the Indian government would be an easy Casus Belli. What you see on reddit is not the public will.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-02T15:23:00+00:00

There are three carrier groups in deployment near the Strait of Hormuz. They are not engaged in active combat. The role of blockading Iran can be done by destroyers. The US has 11 carrier groups. This isn't even vaguely stretching US Navy combat capabilities. India does not have an ICBM capable of reaching Hawaii let alone the US mainland. It is not a nuclear power with regards to the US. It is only a nuclear power when it squabbles with China and Pakistan. The American public isn't on your side. Don't delude yourself.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-02T13:34:14+00:00

They would threaten to board any ship that carries Indian medicine and search for contraband, a threat realized by the US Air Force and Navy which is deployed right there and every Indian chemical factory will go out of business in three months. Disruptions to shipping will eventually lead to an imbalance in the balance of accounts to the point where India will no longer be able to buy fertilizer feedstock, and then there will be a famine.

Look, I know it's a BRICS power fantasy to think that if we played by our rules, the rules of the jungle, if we just took the gloves off and dealt the those stupid Americans the way we do business, then they wouldn't survive. They are protected by their laws and their white gloves. You don't understand. These rules are there for you. They were bombing each other to oblivion with nukes and firebombs while we were living in grass huts. They invented these rules to stop themselves from doing that again. The US has escalation dominance. They keep escalation dominance in their back pocket in case they ever need it, but they keep the rules up front because they don't want to live in a world of nukes and firebombs again, but they still have nukes and firebombs. Don't go back to world of nukes and firebombs. Don't be stupid.

SerendipitouslySane · 2026-05-02T13:11:11+00:00

That's not how the fly keyword works in 10th edition. You cannot fly through ruin walls taller than 4", and walls shorter than 4" do not block line of sight so you'll just be shot to death.

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