Fighting Chaos Marines tonight...seeking help please

[OIF Knight]

So this chaos space marine army I'm fighting tonight is going on about a 6 month win streak. I can't seem to beat it with my IG, SM or Daemons. Its a mech army- PM, NM, 1kSons, x2 Defilers, Vini, Dakka Pred, x2 princes (one with lash), Dread. The main problem seems to be just too many targets that need to go down within the first two turns of the games. Focusing on 2-3 leaves 3-4 others untouched once within assault range.

 

Any ideas or advice regarding anti chaos marines mech would be greatly appreciated :(

[Giga]

It would be nice if you also told us what's in your army and what points you're playing at. ;)

 

Anyway, your opponent's list lacks reliable anti-tank. Just about the only long-range anti-tank he has is the two defilers, the vindicator, and possibly two meltaguns on plague marines. The princes can be considered anti-tank, but that means they'll have to be close to you and hence vulnerable to counter-assault. None of this is overly effective anti-tank; the defiler's pieplate will generally scatter 4 inches, which is enough to get it off the vehicle hull of a rhino, and to halve its strength. Vindicator pieplate is, likewise, not overly effective anti-tank. You need to take advantage of this by going mech and stacking your army with effective anti-tank, ie. multimelta attack bikes, MM/HF speeders, MMs on your landraider(s), and free missile launchers on your tacticals.

 

In marine vs marine battles, the player who gets to shoot the enemy's squads first is usually the one to win. In your case, it means you need to pop his transports as early as possible, and then shoot/assault the squads inside. This is particularly important with thousand sons (you really don't want them shooting you with their AP3 bolters) and noise marines (the str5 ap3 flamer hurts). You don't even have to attack them with something overly dangerous - merely locking them down in close combat is going to prevent him from using these units to their full potential.

 

His plague marines aren't gonna be that dangerous on their own, and he'll probably use them to hold objectives, hunt your vehicles with dual meltaguns, or shoot your marines with dual plasmaguns. Dakkapred is also something you can pretty much ignore. The other prince will likely be close combat specialist, so just take it out with assault terminators or shoot it with sternguard. You don't have to worry too much about the dread; it'll probably come close to you, at which point you just blow it up with melta or get some assault terminators to turn it into scrap metal. If you're lucky, it might end up going crazy and not moving for an entire turn, too.

 

If you're fully mech, you shouldn't have much trouble with the lash prince. As I said earlier, your opponent lacks proper anti-tank, and unless he has tons of luck with his penetration and vehicle damage chart rolls and you dont know how to utilize cover, he'll end up not using his lash prince most of the time. As for the vindicator, don't be afraid to shoot it from extreme ranges. Keep in mind you don't have to destroy it; merely shaking or stunning it will render it inefficient - deployment is very important here, if you can get a coversave against the str10 ap2 pieplate, you've already pretty much nullified its worth.

 

Also, consider keeping some of the more vulnerable stuff in your army in reserve. Especially if the opponent gets the first turn. Keep in mind the opponent will likely advance on you, so that by turn 2 or 3 his vehicles will have already passed the middle of the table, putting them into perfect position to get shot by your MM attackbikes and speeders arriving from reserves.

 

Hope this helps.

[Grey Mage]

So this chaos space marine army I'm fighting tonight is going on about a 6 month win streak. I can't seem to beat it with my IG, SM or Daemons. Its a mech army- PM, NM, 1kSons, x2 Defilers, Vini, Dakka Pred, x2 princes (one with lash), Dread. The main problem seems to be just too many targets that need to go down within the first two turns of the games. Focusing on 2-3 leaves 3-4 others untouched once within assault range.

 

Any ideas or advice regarding anti chaos marines mech would be greatly appreciated ;)

If Im reading that right your looking at a list of

 

1 Squad of Plague Marines

1 Squad of Noise Marines

1 Squad of Tzeentch Marines

All in rhinos?

 

2 Defilers

A vindicator

A dreadnaught

And two deamon princes, one of whom has lash of submission?

 

And you have at your disposal IG, SM and Daemons?

 

I see two threats that must be destroyed turn 1 for best effect- the defilers. Everything else is short range *if the NM are mounted* and should be counterable with proper target priority- its just 9 targets after all, and looks like a 1750 list to me.

 

If you can confirm the points value Id be more than happy to give you a couple of lists against it, might anyways in a bit... Im bored.

[minigun762]

So this chaos space marine army I'm fighting tonight is going on about a 6 month win streak. I can't seem to beat it with my IG, SM or Daemons. Its a mech army- PM, NM, 1kSons, x2 Defilers, Vini, Dakka Pred, x2 princes (one with lash), Dread. The main problem seems to be just too many targets that need to go down within the first two turns of the games. Focusing on 2-3 leaves 3-4 others untouched once within assault range.

 

Any ideas or advice regarding anti chaos marines mech would be greatly appreciated :)

 

Some general thoughts that will be useful (assuming you're playing SM)

 

1) IronClads in Drop Pods. Drop in next to a Defiler and try to fry it, if that doesn't work AV13 should protect you against the BattleCannon and you strike before (I4vsI3) and more accurately(WS4vsWS3) so you have a good chance of killing it in HtH before it strikes. Having said that, watch out for Daemon Princes they can be a pain.

2) Multi-Melta Attack Bikes. These things are sent directly from your corpse God-Emperor. They will fry any piece of armor quickly and they can even be used outside the 12" range to burn down his Daemon Princes. Land Speeders can substitute as well.

3) Land Raiders. Most of his anti-armor is fairly close ranged (Meltaguns, Demolisher, DCCW) as Giga pointed out. Taking a standard Land Raider will give you plenty of TL'd LasCannon shots to disable/destroy his armor as it marches up the board. The Crusader and Redeemer are less useful because his troops will be in Rhinos.

4) Hellfire Dreadnoughts. One of the units I REALLY wish I could take as Chaos is a sane shooty Dread. For 125 points you can take 2 TL'd AutoCannons. Thats roughly 3.5 hits against a Rhino = 1.1 penetrating hits, thats quite reliable really. Its also useful against his Daemon Princes and the rest of his armor.

5) Sniper Scout squads with Hellfire Heavy Bolter. Target his Lash Prince first and blast away. You should have a 12" range bonus over him, so make the most of it.

6) Rhino/Drop Pod Tactical Squads with Meltagun and Power Fist (Heavy doesn't really matter but I'd say Heavy Bolter or Multi-Melta). Keep them in a transport to minimize being Lashed. Otherwise the squads works similar to the IronClad idea above. Remember if you can hit rear AV10 armor, you're Bolters will do something too and don't forget those Krak Grenades.

7) Against his infantry it works like this:

Plague Marines = use S8 weapons, Power weapons or AP1-2 weapons. Anything else is a waste.

Thousand Sons = use Bolters, Chainswords, Heavy Bolters, Flamers. Anything that stacks wounds.

Noise Marines = use anything that you would use to kill normal Marines (Missile Launchers, Plasma etc)

8) Spread out to avoid all the pie plates coming your way and remember to bring those Power Fists, you'll need them against everything he's going to use.

9) Overall game plan should be to hang back with long range units and thin out his units. Target Defilers and Rhinos first (to leave squads stranded) then Vindicators and Dreadnought. If you have podding units, try to make the most of them. For this much armor, that means a focus on Melta weapons.

He's going to assault you at some point, so you have to be preprared for this. You can deal him with Rhino walls and sacrificial combat squads, but in the end it helps to have some sort of counter-charge unit like Assault Marines.

 

I hope this Traitor Marine spilling his guts helps you Loyalist scum. :)

[OIF Knight]

Ok so I apologize for the lack of background info earlier. We just played kill points, I lost, 13-11. My opponent took the following, I may be wrong on certain load outs but you get the picture...

 

2500 pts

 

x1 Nurgle Daemon prince

x1 Lash Prince

 

x10 PM w/rhino

x10 1ksons w/rhino

x10 NM w/rhino

 

x2 Dreads with x2 DCCW

 

x1 Vinidicator

 

x2 Defilers

 

x10 Nurgle Bikes

 

Standard loadouts on the squads included PF/MG where available. The Nurgle bikes got facerolled...I shot them with bolt pistols, they broke, and failed 3 back to back rally checks and ran off the board (hilarious). The biggest problem tended to be Defiler and Vindicator fire. I did attempt to destroy these early on and when possible, but I like to roll 1's a lot...

 

Here is the army I ran with...

 

x1 Tiggy

x1 Captain w/ bike, PW

x1 Command SQD, bikes, PW, MG

 

x6 Assault Termies, 3 TH/SS, 3 LC, x1 LRC Transport

x5 Shooty Termies, x2 CF, x1 HF

x1 Dread w/MM, DCCW

 

x1 Tactical SQD, MM, Flamer, Rhino

x1 Bike SQD, MM, MG, PF

 

x1 Assault SQD, PF

 

x2 Vindicator

 

x1 Predator, TLLC, LC Sponsons

 

I keep everything in Reserve except my Heavy Support and Tac SQD in Rhino. I took Tiggy for the first time and loved him. MotA, Quickening=LOL. My first turn brought in half of my reserves, a little disappointing...however when they arrived they all got decent charges off and were untouched. Overall it was my best performance with my SM against this chaos army. Please drop some hints if you have any. Thanks!

[Iron_Chaos_Brute]

Minigun nailed how to beat that list.