Chaos vs Sisters Spam?

[Bodacious2182]

I am anticipating a game against a fellow who uses 10 immolators all with the heavy flamers on top, and 2 rhinos. Any tips on breaking this much mech spam with CSMs?

[minigun762]

Make sure to take some ranged firepower. Oblits or Autocannon Havoc all be good good choices. Termicide can work as well, but with everything being only a Rhino chassis there isn't the 1-2 great targets you'd have like fighting IG or SM.

 

Remember that you can easily smash them in HtH combat and at best their faith powers will just slow you down once you're engaged. Try to get in close and assault them.

 

Sending your DP after armor is another good idea and hopefully having another squad to assault the SoB who jump out after you pop the tank.

[Corpse.]

Immolators cannot move over 6" and fire their weapons, otherwise they might try tank shocking. That pushes models together and causes problems for you.

 

Try to use rhinos and make a loose rhino wall where they cannot get past without killing your wall off. (and suffer dangerous terrain tests passing) The wall must be loose so you can fire at his vehicles when they get close. They must get within melta range, so your safe with that. I would even spam plasma guns.

 

So melee/melta is still the way to go. Rhinos to prevent his tank shocks from bundling you together. That would be an issue if you were in the open.

 

If you get a chance to pin his infantry units in melee, do it. Even if the odds are against you, don't let his BS4 bolters hail your way. That is when he makes his cost back.

[Zeller]

Land Raider.

 

Ram those pathetic immolaters like a truck through glass.

 

Of course if he has melta spam then this would not work.

[Bodacious2182]

He uses tons of meltas and only 5 or so troops in each 'rhino'.

 

I am thinking 6 plague marine troops, 2 meltas on each. The problem is once I pop a rhino with one squad I can't attack the unit with the same squad that killed the rhino. And whatever is in it, if assaulted, is pretty much going to get rolled, so that leaves 2 units out in the open to be flamered.

 

Thanks for the tips so far, I appreciate it.

[Hellios]

Range fire to kill those transports as quickly as possible.

 

Lash or two to drag 1 or 2 units away from the army

 

Jump on isolated unit and destroy...

 

move onto next unit...

 

After a while even foot sloggers should be getting close... maybe lash a unit or two away...

 

nom nom nom one squad at a time...

 

Also hope you get a KP based mission.

[Zeller]

I'm pretty sure you can assault the unit that just lost their transport.

[Bodacious2182]

Yah that is right, I mis remembered the rule. It has to do with shooting the vehicle wit the rest of the troops, not shooting the vehicle then assaulting the disembarked occupants.

[Bodacious2182]

So I had the match against the sisters player. He had 10 immolators, all with the heavy flamers, and 2 rhinos. the rhinos had 10 models while the others had 6 or so. All of the squads had at least 1 melta gun and two in some others.

 

 

I took 5 sets of plague marines all in rhinos with 2 melta guns and champ with power weapon, 2x3 Oblits and 1x2 Oblits, and a chaos lord w/ MoTz, wings, combi melta, plasma pistol, and dual lightning claws. We are playing a planetary empires campaign and I put eternal warrior on my Chaos lord. I didn't want one of the many melta guns to zap him into nothingness.

 

My plan was to last as long as I could with the plagues and destroy all the rhino and massacre the troops that came out. I loaded the lord up so he could fly around and wipe out the little squads with ease.

 

The set up was dawn of war a mission was objectives, we rolled for 3 of them. I don't remember everything about the game but I will recount the highlights.

 

I chose to deep strike my oblits. I had an icon and in my experience they are just too slow to move on to the board. One 3 man squad and the 2 man squad came in turn 2 and the other 3 man squad came in turn 3. I am also fearful of rolling double one and them not being able to come on the board and being destroyed, they are too expensive to risk.

 

I had first turn and moved all of my stuff on and he deployed nothing so all of his stuff came on from the table edge.

 

First couple of turns were just moving. He moved up and could glance the rhinos with the heavy flamer. I immobilized a couple.

 

The chaos lord really threw him for a loop. I disembarked, jumped over a ruin, plasma pistoled a squad and assaulted it with dual LCs. I had to explain all kinds of rules for that. What sucks though was he used his faith points to make all of the units in the squad have a 3+ invulnerable save and also increase their initiative, tying him up for 2 (or 3, I don't recall) turns. He killed one finally and easily swept the squad. He took 2 wounds in that combat.

 

Later the lord assaulted into dangerous terrain and failed the test, I ten failed the invulnerable, killing him. What a waste. If that assault had been successful I would have one the game.

 

 

Elsewhere there were 5 troops guarding one of the objective and they were standing in the crater of a blown up immolator. On the top of 7, my turn, I rapid fired 3 bolters and 2 melta guns from just outside the terrain. I caused 5 wounds and he saved all of them. Nothing he had was able to contest.

 

 

On the other objective I annihilated a squad guarding with a twin linked plasma from an oblit. 2 other oblits fired their plasma guns (I should have done the cannons here as they were bunched up) into another squad within contesting distance. I rolled poorly on the shots and on the assault the power fists rolled poorly, and the assault never went anywhere on his other turn, either. An assault elsewhere finished killing his HQ. After my assault phase was finished he got 2 faith points back.

 

On the 3rd objective he used his faith points to do the invulnerable save thing and was able to withstand the combat leaving one troop and contesting the objective.

 

Several occasions he used a tactic of making a semi circle of his rhinos and disembarking the troops so he could peek through the crack and fire at the enemy. It worked really good but plague marines just last too long. One strategy I used since he did all that was to throw firepower into the vehicle to get it to explode. The low toughness of his models caused a lot of wounds.

 

 

Overall the game was a lot of fun, but he made a lot of good saves and the faith points really helped out.

 

Any other tips or whatnot? He just has too much stuff that is hard to crack. Stubborn 9 is really good. The faith points make stuff super hard to kill. I am thinking a waptime nurgle princes could really cause some hurt, along with maybe a greater demon. Plagues seem to be a must have for their survivability against the flamers and with the two melta guns just eat stuff up.

 

If this is an annihilation game there just isn't going to be a way to kill enough stuff. Objectives are where the win is going to have to come from. I should have had this one because of those 2 guys who miraculously survived a hail of bolter fire.

[Archnomad]

Immolator spam is a hard as nails army to beat.

 

Realistically though, immolator spam works on the solid ideal that the immolators kill infantry, and the infantry kill vehicles. However, this is shaken up via rending bolters and exorcists. If you can neuter the exorcists though, then you can happily force him to disembark then destroy him.

 

I wouldn't bother with Lash. It's almost totally neutered by mech. A good power to take if you like tzeentch, is gift of chaos, you can cast it twice if you're tzeentchi, and it works on a 4+. Making spawn is not what it's for in this case. But all his infantry models are T3. Including his Simacrulum (spelling?), his Cannoness and his Sister Superior. However, they get a save against it.

 

In short, sisters are really hard in this build. Obliterator Plasma cannons can be nice for picking squads he didn't martyr up (invulnerable), I strongly advocate Oblits, just cause they can pop all their tanks with ease. But DO NOT deep strike them. You should be spending as much time shooting as you can, and try and stay the hell away from their army, and out of sight of exorcists.

 

To be honest, I'm not sure how I would beat sisters in this build. I managed to win a game against them with my nurgle list ( 2 Daemon princes, 3 units of plague marines in rhinos, 3 predators) but I got lucky with my preds. I survived a silly number of exorcist shots, and he rolled badly for them. However, if your opponent doesn't run exorcists, then take oblits/preds and blow the crap out of his immolators from afar (i recommend the 2 las + AC pred for 130 pts).

 

Just my thoughts on it.

[Chengar Qordath]

Immolators cannot move over 6" and fire their weapons, otherwise they might try tank shocking. That pushes models together and causes problems for you.

Wrong: Heavy Flamer Immolators get a special rule that allows them to move up to 12" and still fire their Heavy Flamers.

 

I would say the best way to deal with Immolator spam is to stock up on long-range transport killing weapons; autocannons would be my personal reccomendation. Immolators are only scary if they get within template range, so the best strategy is to kill as many of them as possible while they're still a long way away.

[Archnomad]

Try out this squad, rather than termicide (if you don't mind tailoring of course).

 

6 Chosen

Autocannon

2 Plasma Guns

 

 

Cheap, but fires 4 S7 shots a turn, 6S7 shots at close range. Should be able to do a number on those immolators.

[Bodacious2182]

Immolators cannot move over 6" and fire their weapons, otherwise they might try tank shocking. That pushes models together and causes problems for you.

Wrong: Heavy Flamer Immolators get a special rule that allows them to move up to 12" and still fire their Heavy Flamers.

 

I would say the best way to deal with Immolator spam is to stock up on long-range transport killing weapons; autocannons would be my personal reccomendation. Immolators are only scary if they get within template range, so the best strategy is to kill as many of them as possible while they're still a long way away.

 

 

Taking the above vice into consideration here is what I have come up with (1900pts):

 

2x Demon Princes w/ MoN, Warptime

3x2 Oblits

3x5 Chosen w/ Autocannon and Plasma Gun & IoCG

3x10 CSMs w/ Melta gun, Autocannon, IoCG, and Rhino

 

I was going to run 3x3 Oblits but if I dropped one of them from each squad that bought me another troop choice.

 

I figure, depending on deployment, mission and whatnot, I could hang as far back as possible in area terrain and snipe everything. I figure 2 to 3 turns at most before they get to my positions. The rhinos could not move and act as a pillbox or drop their load and act as a rhino wall.

 

Alternatively I could swap the oblits out for:

 

3x5 Havocs w/ Autocannon, Melta Gun, IoCG, and Rhino.

 

That would also give me 6 rhinos to act as a rhino wall/pillbox and give me 9 autocannons.

 

 

Lastly, since this is a planetary empires campaign, I can give one unit a special rule. I think giving a prince Hit and Run would really put a damper on Their 3+ invulnerable save faith thing.

 

Thanks for reading.

[Archnomad]

No keep the oblits. They can drop transports then plasma cannon the insides. MoN is probably the best investment to stop them going all +2 strength on your daemon princes (which would wound you on 4s normally). The third troop choice is definitely worth it. If you're allowed to take a unit with a USR, then I would HIGHLY recommend the old (harks back to last edition... *wipes a tear from his eye*) 8 havocs, IoCG, 4 Autocannons, Tank Hunters. Pewpew 8 S8 shots a turn at tanks. That's just harsh. Especially against the immolator army. They WILL pop a transport every turn.

 

Just my thoughts ;)

[Chengar Qordath]

I would agree with keeping the Obliterators; lascannons are also quite good at killing transports from long range, and like Archnomad said the plasma is equally good at killing the contents of the transports.

 

Archnomad's suggestions for the USR sqaud is simply brutal; as he said, that squad will demolish transports.

 

Giving your Daemon Princes wings can turn them into fairly potent vehicle-killers as well; 5 attacks on the charge, and 6+2d6 vs rear armor 10 on penetration rolls can do a lot of damage, especially when you add Warptime re-rolls into the mix.