BA dealing with Mech heavy I.G.

[SirDuck13]

Alright, this may be a bad topic to bring up. My search-fu is weak at times and I may have overlooked a previous post.

 

With that being said, here's the problem. I played a recent bunch of games that were part of a "mini-tournament" that me and a friend put on. For the most part, the level of play for our group is kind of low. I beat most of the other players with relative ease. There are of course a few players that work at a higher level and put up a challenge, but there is one above all the others that just seems unbeatable. He plays pretty standard chi-melta vet spam with some tanks, Vendetta and a Manticore. My list is 3 RAS at 9 strong and with a meltagun and a thunder hammer per squad, each with a priest with power weapon and jump pack attached. My HQ is a Reclusiarch with a jump pack. I also run a libby dread, a furioso, and a standard dreadnaught, as well as 2 stormravens with the starting loadout, +hurricane bolters.

 

So my problem is, I rolled through nearly half of his list, and still lost a kill point match. He just had too much stuff to kill and I couldn't go through enough of it fast enough to get a win before the game was over. I even had a pretty epic first turn that saw me exploading or imobilizing 4 chimera and blowing up both Lemun Russ tanks before they even had a chance to shoot.

 

I need suggestions for how to handle that volume of armor. I'd like to keep the same basic list, but I'm open to hearing different tactics and maybe slightly different weapons load outs for my units. I just felt like banging my head against the wall after our game and it's very frustrating to know I was just beat because of a hugely underpriced army with all the cheapest, most effective choices from a single codex crammed into it.

 

SD13

[Castiel]

For armour kills a bike squad with meltas and powerfist is great! :D

[Volcatus]

Frankly, more melta is what's needed. The RAS need to be 10 strong so you can take the 2nd meltagun per squad.

 

2 squads of 2 Attack Bikes would go a long way towards helping out as well.

[knife&fork]

I need suggestions for how to handle that volume of armor.

 

Your already getting tips on how to change your list, let's talk tactics instead.

 

Position, aggression and speed.

 

Crowd his deployment zone and limit his mobility, get in his face quickly and try to use wrecks or immobilized vehicles for cover. Consider using the tyranid trick of assaulting vehicles you have very little chance (or no chance at all) to harm just to gain distance and position. Melta bombs are inexpensive tank shock insurance, 2D6 is much more reliable than a fist or hammer.

 

Don't forget that you can use a ranged weapon to attempt death or glory. Don't be afraid of taking on the melta vets with your assault marines, they can't kill your infantry quickly enough. Don't forget that his meltavet chimeras can only move 6" and still shoot, try to make him choose between disembarking or not getting any shots at all.

[Taz]

I would say that even if you don't add a second melta to each squad at the very least a tenth man should be added to each and then combat squad. you could probably mitigate the points by dropping the power weapons off your priests. More squads=bigger target spread each turn. I'm also with knife&fork. Packing meltabombs on your sergeant is great when your not sure your thunderhammers can finish the job.

[knife&fork]

Another thing.

 

Deepstriking into cover and losing a few marines to dangerous terrain tests can be preferable to a safe deepstrike that leaves you more exposed, or making it across the board on foot. It's not always the case, but keep it mind.

[Morticon]

Depends on a few things, but it looks like you're talking about 2k+ points.

 

Id like to echo what people have said, namely Melta- or more specifically AP1.

Attack bikers are legendary against guard and can get into positions to take flanks very quickly. Additionally, after an initial turbo, they're rocking a 3++.

Against guard, I prefer rocking 2mm, 1hb in squads of three attack bikes.

 

 

The most important part about facing lists like these is knowing target priority. (not assuming you dont, just saying it's of utmost importance- since so much is so deadly).

 

Mephiston helps a lot with guard tanks (especially squadrons of russes etc) too.

 

As a take-all-comers-but-theme-for-guard list, in my meta environment (ie: its a list factored for the area I play in. So, while it may do alright here, in your meta environment it may not be as successful) i'd suggest something like:

 

Mephiston

Corbulo

8 DC - TH

Rhino

10 RAS - 2MG, TH

5 RAS - MG, PW

Razor - (heavy weapon of your choice)

5 RAS - MG, PW

Razor - (heavy weapon of your choice)

5 RAS - MG, PW

Razor - (heavy weapon of your choice)

3 Attack Bikes- 2mm,1hb

3 Attack Bikes- 2mm,1hb

10 VAS - TH, 3MBs, JP.

 

(2000points)

 

Its fast enough to get up ASAP and still lay some fire down, depending on what you want done. There are enough vehicles and bodies to hide mephy till you need him, and the VAS can split up and take out 2 tanks if necessary, also meaning that the enemy will need to keep their tanks moving (limiting fire) if they dont want more hits against them.

 

Remember, hammers are also golden against Chimera lists since any result on the damage table will also provide a shaken result, meaning you can ignore those pesky times when a weapon destroyed and immob result sees the crew still safe to shoot out at you.

 

You may find however that you still dont have enough target saturation on your side of the table with the vanguard in the list, as useful as they are. In which case, drop them and i'd recommend getting another 2 bikers and an "immediate threat unit" like a drop pod RAS with 2 meltas, an infernus and a PF. (thunderhammer preferable).

 

That way you have 3 biker units storming forward, and the pod in his face already on first turn.

 

 

 

The largest issue with the pod however is first turn.

If you dont get first turn, then unless cover is very favourable, you almost always want to fight from reserve and work around the terrain, but the master of the fleet (or is it astropath? always get confused) and his bastard +1 to reserve rolls make this too difficult a fight. Even worse with a pod coming in by itself.

 

So, those are all things to think about.

 

 

If the list in general doesnt appeal to you, all good. Just take from it the concept that every unit must present a threat to the enemy and provide support to each other.

The enemy must struggle to make choices about who he needs to kill and must be made to sweat everytime you pass a vehicle cover save or he just shakes a vehicle or just has a weapon destroyed result.

 

The default "net mentality" of this concept is redundancy through spam, but you dont need full on spam to incorporate aspects of redundancy. Different units with similar capabilities can also provide this back up support for each other.

 

 

Hope that helps at least a bit.

[Brother_Byhlli]

I would say that even if you don't add a second melta to each squad at the very least a tenth man should be added to each and then combat squad. you could probably mitigate the points by dropping the power weapons off your priests. More squads=bigger target spread each turn. I'm also with knife&fork. Packing meltabombs on your sergeant is great when your not sure your thunderhammers can finish the job.

 

Combat-squadding in a game you're already losing by kill points is not a good idea.

[Master Of Malfeasance X]

Don't combat squad with kill points, drop a priest and the power weapons from your priests, drop the hurricane bolters from your ravens. Consider a 5 or 6 man vanguard squad with meltabombs and a power weapon or hammer thrown in to kill clustered vehicles and take some of the pressure off your DSing RAS. If you did not win first turn, reserve everything (you should probably be deep striking anyway).

[SnorriSnorrison]

As many others have already said the most important things, I'd only like to support what they've said.

Deepstrike can be golden against guard, as those templates have a good chance to scatter on his vehicles instead of your bunched up squads.

Then of course, you can shoot meltaguns in their rear(which should hurt them. a lot. ) while your non-deepstriking units can zoom up the battlefield unharmed.

 

Melta-vets don't do good against furiously charging assault marines, especially not with a Reclusiarch. Exploding Chimeras with meltaguns from your squad should be easy as well. :)

 

Oh, and have you considered DC? I don't think that you transport your RAS in your ravens as you can't combat squad them, so there is room for a smaller shock-unit. Give them some Thunderhammers, attach the Reclusiarch, the Furioso and reserve them.

On turn two, pray to the dice gods that your 'ravens hit the table and zoom up to his flanks, use the MM to pop tanks and await the incoming meltafire with a nice 4++ save.

 

 

One thing though, instead of the Libby Dread, the simple Librarian might be better for your uses. The Dread has a chance to be dead after one shot, whereas the Librarian can hide among your assault marines and, depending on the powers you gave him, provide a 5+ coversave(which is better than nothing when you get caught in the open!) or bost their combat abilites. Just think of Sanguine Sword against tanks!

 

 

Snorri

[Xenith]

IG parking lots can be decimated by a decent deepstrike. Blood lance can do damage, with shield and lance being the optimal set up - create your own cover.. Like has been said before, 5 vanguard, jump packs, 5 melta bombs can probably multicharge tanks and kill 1-3 on the turn they come in. You need larger squads to absorb the firepower coming your way, even if one survives, it's KP denial.

[SirDuck13]

Alright, so you're correct. This is a 2k army situation. Also, there are a few notes as to our game types that should be considered. For balancing issues, we're trying to incorporate a method of KP calculation we found here online. Instead of raw kill points at the end of the game, we use Kill Point percentage. You calculate how many KP you've earned vs. how many are possible and that's the percentage. It actually cost me that game. If we'd been doing actual KP, I would have won. He has 20 KP possible and I claimed 11. However, I only have 12 KP possible and he claimed 10. So while I had technically killed more stuff, he got the win because it was only 55% of his army. Obviously both forms of counting have balance issues. Raw KP bluntly favors armies that have fewer KP while the percentage seems to favor armies with more. I don't know what we're going to do about that.

 

Now that I've cleared up the situation a little, here's what I think I'm going to do next time to help relieve some of the pressure. I'm going to add the 10th man with a meltagun to my RAS and combat squad them. That'll start right out of the gate by giving me 3 extra squads and the abilitiy to pick out 3 extra targets. That'll also make the squads smaller and give me the ability to DS more reliably. I've already started by Drop Podding in a threat on the first turn. I use the Furioso Librarian with the Blood Lance and I have a ton of success. My only problem with this approach is his volume of melta. The Libby is pretty much dead after turn 1, but he does keep some of the chimelta squads pinned down as my army advances. The enemy just can't afford to ignore him back there. Other than that, I like the idea of biker squads, but I don't have the models or points to really support that. I also like the thunder hammer ideas, and I already incorporate as many as I can get my grubby hands on.

 

The only thing I don't like about the Combat Squad option against his list is that with his volume of fire, he can potentially break a 5 man squad into bits and either have them run or have them cut down below capacity to be a threat before they really do any good. However he'll probably be forced to focus fire one squad around (As long as I keep them in range of a priest) to effectively kill it, and that'll give the rest of the squads some breathing room to advance. I don't know, I'll have to think more about all of this. Thanks for all the advice and keep it coming. I'm really tired of getting my butt kicked by this guy and would love to dish out some well deserved payback.

 

SD13

[Taz]

One concept that's carried over into BA from my experience as a Necron player is playing with bubble ranges. Using the squads with priests as rally points for deep striking, at least of a sort. Of course this creates it's own problems, especially with the amount of scattering ordinance IG can put down. With reserves and scattering, you're always going to have a random element as well. One thing you might consider if you keep the ravens is putting beacons on them and then putting the combat squads with the priests inside. This will give you pinpoint deep strikes right into your FNP/FC bubble. Bringing the libby dread with the sheer volume of melta, especially if it's not using Shield, may not be the best idea. Your likely to get more use out of a regular librarian or Mephiston. Shield and Blood Lance will probably be your best bet for armor kills and giving you some protection from retaliatory fire. Those Vanguard Vets would also be handy for either dropping meltabombs or engaging any units that make it out of their transports. I'm sure you know this by now but for the sake of saying it your priorities should be retaining cover and getting into combat with his units as fast as possible. By using Heroic Intervention and keeping squads in your ravens you still have the ability to engage his squads the same turn your deepstriking units hit the table and crack the armor, hopefully saving them a fair amount of grief. I don't know how your opponent deploys, but if you start by hitting his flanks and rolling your units toward the middle you may be able to further mitigate how much fire he can focus on any given unit while putting progressively more pressure on him.

 

Although I am writing this post first thing in the morning, far earlier than I am used to being awake so there's every chance my advice is arse-backwards again. This is just what went through my head as I read your posts.

[stummer]

Have you tried you vanguard vets , a mix of power weapon( not useful against vehicles) power fist and melta bombs, allow for a flexible DS assault on most units, great for multi assault on a car park of IG .

[Morticon]

Alright, so you're correct. This is a 2k army situation. Also, there are a few notes as to our game types that should be considered. For balancing issues, we're trying to incorporate a method of KP calculation we found here online. Instead of raw kill points at the end of the game, we use Kill Point percentage. You calculate how many KP you've earned vs. how many are possible and that's the percentage. It actually cost me that game. If we'd been doing actual KP, I would have won. He has 20 KP possible and I claimed 11. However, I only have 12 KP possible and he claimed 10. So while I had technically killed more stuff, he got the win because it was only 55% of his army. Obviously both forms of counting have balance issues. Raw KP bluntly favors armies that have fewer KP while the percentage seems to favor armies with more. I don't know what we're going to do about that.

 

SD13

 

 

Dude,

 

You won.

 

Sadly that "balancing issue" is much more skewed, especially as you go higher with points.

The MSU/spam concept is really potent, and one of its few drawbacks is Kill Points. Taking away that disability is just making those lists stronger.

 

Its almost like playing against a player who plays 2x5man scout squads as his only troops in 2k, and demands that all units can claim to "balance" things out.

 

I think its really a bad idea that if I have 12 KP in my list, and my opponent has 20, that I need to score 10 and he needs only 6 to just net a draw. Thats not cool. 6-10 is usually a thrashing- and rightly so. The game has been balanced already, with certain lists having much more expensive units. If people can "break" the dex by spamming certain units, and not have any negative side effects, then its not cool.

 

 

HOWEVER, all is not lost.

 

I like that your gaming group is open to try new things.

 

Heres what a mate of mine suggested to me, when I asked him about tourney stuff (he may have gotten the concept from another big tourney, i stand to be corrected).

 

Instead of the usual KP game, what you do is this:

 

1. Elect 3 of your opponents units to be the target KP units - they can be anything

2. He does the same.

3. You elect 3 of your OWN units to be the other target KP units - again, they can be anything.

4. He does the same.

 

 

Now, irrespective of size, you both have the same KP total available. And its a much more tactical game. You need to consider what you've chosen as well as whats been chosen.

It makes for a completely unique and exciting new game style.

 

Give it a bash!

 

Cheers,

 

Mort.

 

b

[SirDuck13]

Yeah, Morticon, that was the part that frustrated me the most. I know that if I had the same results in the last game we played (where we used true KP) I would have been the winner and I only lost on a technicality of what we as a gaming group had decided to change. However, I've been kicking around some of the ideas and looking at where to free up points and I think next time I'm going to be able to bring 10 man RAS to the table so I can combat squad them with a meltagun in both combat squads. That should help me hit more targets in a single turn, which was my biggest problem. Every unit I had destroyed a unit almost every turn, it was just a mater of not being able to hit enough targets fast enough. I think combat squads kept close together with a priest for support will be able to help a lot of this issue. My only concern is that it makes the squad size smaller and easier for him to focus fire and destroy. I'll have to get some play testing in to see how this works out in the end, but I think it'll be alright. I'll also take the game type you recommended into consideration and run it by the guys to see what they think. It's something interesting to try, that's for sure.

 

SD13

 

(Edited for more complete reply)

[SamaNagol]

Don't combat squad in KP missions.

[Morticon]

Don't combat squad in KP missions.

 

The way they play KP its actually to his benefit to CS- since he has more KP, the ratio needing to win will be higher.

[Brother_Byhlli]

Don't combat squad in KP missions.

 

The way they play KP its actually to his benefit to CS- since he has more KP, the ratio needing to win will be higher.

 

Yup. My initial advice to not combat squad came before he told us how the gaming group plays.

 

I agree with Morticon, though. Your opponent has found a rule that allows his army to be even stronger and ignore one of the built-in balances the game designers already used. I agree that getting rid of that rule is about the first thing I'd be doing. Not acceptable.

[SirDuck13]

Yeah, I agree. I'm going to have to go over that with him and talk about game balancing. Because yes, he does have a huge sum of KP on the table for those kinds of matches, he also has the max toops selections for objective games. The reason we originally looked at this kind of set up was because of Tau older armies that had tons of KP built into them before the FAQ that made the gun drones on vehicles not count as extra squads for KP totals. But now that they've fixed that, and have reworked some of the older armies by giving them new books (See how I avoided the plural of Codex there?). By giving them up to date rules and army lists, and FAQing Tau, they've pretty well resolved the issue. So yeah, I'm going to have to talk with him about that. But we'll see where that gets me. He'll probably try to dismiss it as bellyaching or whining because I lost, but I feel like it's a well founded response to the issue.

 

SD13

[Castiel]

If he tries to get out of it you must smite him with the full fury of the Emperor! (Or a rulebook!) ;)

[SirDuck13]

Just in with an update. I talked to my I.G. buddy and we came to the conclusion that for our game group, normal KP rules will work the best. I did run the idea of the chosen 6 kill points assigned to specific units past him and we got to talking about it, and I think it would end up being really beneficial for certain kinds of armies, especially his I.G. so we're not gonna try that one. So, from now on, it's back to standard 3 game types and standard 3 win conditions. Although in the event of a draw on captured objectives, we do decide a winner by KP so that it's easier to maintain some form of ladder rankings. Thanks for all the input guys. Next time we square off, maybe I'll actually be able to pull down the big W!

 

SD13

[Brother_Byhlli]

Good luck, brother!