How does a DoA army deal with draigowing

[Trace]

I usually bring dante, a lib, 2 assualt squads, priests, and maybe some honor guard or sanquinary guard. There's stuff in there to deal with most anything, but with draigo and his paladin buddies I'm hard pressed to see anything in my list that can effectively deal with them. I thought of using a talon dread to kill the paladins but with so many psycannons I don't think he would survive long enough to reach combat. What else could I bring to deal with this unit?

[SamaNagol]

Meltaguns kill them outright, you should have plenty of those.

[Trace]

It'll take roughly 16 meltagun shots to kill draigo alone with his 3+ invul. I guess shooting em up with melta and then assaulting them is an option, but I just not convinced that anything carrying a meltagun can go toe to toe with draigo and paladins.

[SamaNagol]

Shoot the unit. I assume you have an honour guard with 4 meltaguns and Dante as well?

 

Draigowing usually only has 2 units. Tie one up by feeding it small units and then focus fire ALL of your Melta at the other unit. They are 5+ save T4 models then.

[Brother Landrain]

Actually ~ 22 Meltagun shots to do 4 wounds to Draigo.

But his Paladins only take ~ 3 each.

 

I don't run Draigo Wing, but I have played DW a lot.

Their biggest weakness is low numbers and having to make a lot of saves.

 

With 2+ normal armour a LOT of Bolter shots will cause wounds. ~18 shots for 1 unsaved Wound.

With standard CC attacks it is also ~18 attacks for 1 unsaved wound

 

Paladins usually have only a 5++ save. Most don't use normal swords for the 4++.

So making a lot of attacks with Power Weapons helps.

 

For that you need Death Company...

Armed with PW's That drops the number of Attacks to ~4 for 1 unsaved wound.

To Kill.. Thunderhammers drop that to ~3 Attacks for each KILL.

 

But TH's also lower your number of attacks.

 

A 10 man Paladin Squad fully tricked out, with 4x Psycannon, Psybolts, Banner, Apothecary, and 9 Halberds... runs 750 pts

 

If they charge.. Using Hammerhand will probably cause 13 unsaved wounds at init 6

If Charged.. Using Hammerhand will cause 9 unsaved wounds at init 6

If Instead the Paladins went to Daemonhammers instead, it greatly improves your chances, as his init drops to 1. And his cost stays the same.

 

Now a fully decked out 10 Man DC with LeMartes, with all PW and JP's costs 650 pts

On the charge you can cause 19.56 unsaved wounds at Init 5.

 

Using all TH's costs 800 pts (ouch)...

Lemartes would cause 1.33 wounds at Init 5

and the DC would kill 9.75 DEAD paladins at Init 1

 

Things to remember about GK in CC...

 

With Hammerhand

Basically for:

Each Halberd, For every 3 Attacks they kill 1 DC at init 6.

Each Sword/Falchion, For every 3 Attacks they kill 1 DC at init 4.

Each Hammer, For every 5 attacks they kill 2 DC at init 1.

 

Without Hammerhand

Each Halberd, For every 4 Attacks they kill 1 DC at init 6.

Each Sword/Falchion, For every 4 Attacks they kill 1 DC at init 4.

Each Hammer, For every 5 attacks they kill 2 DC at init 1.

 

Your DC on the charge.

With a Chaplain and a PW.. 1 DC does 1.78 wounds at init 5

With a Chaplain and a TH.. 1 DC does 1.46 wounds at init 1

With a chaplain and a CCW.. it takes 5 DC to cause 1 wound

 

 

• Rules for Dealing Grey Knight Paladins
  
  • Rule 0: Shoot them from a long ways away
    
  • Rule 1: Dont Charge a lot of Halberds
    
  • Rule 2: Only Charge if you have a LOT more high init PW attacks, than they do.
    

 

My conclusion,

 

Unless you use DC with a lot of PW's and an attached Chaplain, a DOA army really cannot deal with Draigo and the Paladins.

Even then, If he has a lot of Halberds( and why wouldn't he?), you will be very hard pressed.

As a DOA army just does not have enough Ranged low AP firepower. Meltaguns are nice, but by the time you get in range, you are inside the SB Bubble and inside their charge range, and they have a low ROF...

 

Assault Brother Hudson: Let's just bug out and call it even, man! What are we even talking about this for?

Captain Ripley: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Commander Dante: Sadly, we forgot to put any weapons on our Battle Barges, so we cannot Nuke them...

[SamaNagol]

DC will get butchered by Paladins with Halberds and Brotherhood Banner, which they WILL have in a Draigo list.

 

You are going to have to move so that you can get multiple charges off with 2 units at a time and ensure if you are firing Meltaguns first he gets NO cover save.

 

And a Vanguard unit with several Storm Shields will hold up the second unit of Paladins for a while.

[Brother Landrain]

10 Vanguard with JP/SS/LC will run 650 pts

 

on the charge

with 30 attacks, they can cause 8.89 unsaved wounds

with a chaplain, they can cause 13.33 unsaved wounds

 

While the Paladins with 27 Halberd attacks can cause 3.5 dead Vanguard.

 

The SS does make the Vets more survivable, using LC's gets a reroll to wound, which helps.

FC either thru a Priest or Red Thirst will also help.

 

Either way...

 

Don't Charge Halberds.

 

The +2 Init combined with being a PW and no saves is just too strong, especially for free.

Combined with a banner and the charge for 4 attacks, its just crazy...

And against 1 W models, no need to activate the Force Weapons, go for +1 Strength instead.

 

Halberds really should be Init 10, but only 1 Attack per model... (i.e. First Strike... but then playtesting would have determined that...)

[RebG]

a DOA army really cannot deal with Draigo and the Paladins.

 

Pretty much this. I've played vs Draigowing about 5-6 times now and have been close to a draw once. My worst result was a 1-13 Kill Point loss.

Halberds negate our main combat advantage (of going first) and, even with multi-asaults, if they get off a power like Sanctuary/Shrouding (whichever causes dangerous terrain tests to charge) it depletes your chances even more - like losing your three LC\SS Honour Guard and you Libby in one charge (yes it happened, no I wasn't happy!).

Also wound allocation across their full strength squad leaves you often with 10 power weapons hitting back.

I asked how to beat them on Nurglez's thread in the OI forum and the general opinion was either tailor your list 100% with plamsa devastators and Vindicators etc or you're going to find it nigh impossible.

Nurglez went to a 1,750 tournament last weekend and won all four games and didn't once lose his 'deathstar' squad. Demoralising huh?

 

Here's a quote from the thread from Black Orange, who, as a lot of you know, know's his way round a Blood Angel army pretty well:

 

 

Black Orange - Little question for you.

 

Just briefly, how do you think you'd fight against Paladins along the lines of your or Nurglez's (i.e 10 man Draigo deathstar) lists with a Blood Angel assault based force?

 

I don't want to distract too much from the main thread but thought it'd be interesting being an experienced BA general as you are. RAS don't do enough damage to avoid dying once struck back - bolt pistols aren't much of a worry and the odd melta gun doen't have the chance for more than one kill really. DC are impaled on halberds before they hit. Lone Stormravens are left on the floor due to 6 psycannon pointed their way. Is there anything in a 'typical' BA assault force can do? Multiple assault with everything at once?

 

Also, to everyone else, for us non-Paldins looking in on this is there anything (except for maybe Dark Eldar) that worries your 10 man squads? Any units you really, really don't want to see bearing down on you? Be interesting to see what you say :)

 

GK deathstar is a bad matchup for BA DoA. I'm not going to try to blow any smoke about it either. I guess the only chance I could see is spamming as much melta as possible.

 

G

 

Sucks to be us sometimes!

[SamaNagol]

That's why I would never take a DoA list to a serious tournament.

 

You really need Blood Talon dreads and Vindicators for the job

[AbusePuppy]

The easiest way to beat Draigo and Pals is by using your strengths on his weaknesses. Paladins are slow and expensive; you're fast and flexible. Their shooting is mediocre and you have high resilience, so basically you just need to play to the objectives and avoid direct confrontations for the most part. If he has any support units (like Psyflemen), target them first, as they'll be a lot easier to bring down than his main forces.

 

The Paladins themselves are going to be extremely tough, but remember that he has a HUGE number of points sunk into each of the 2-4 units he'll have. If he runs large squads, just do as above and avoid them- you can't realistically beat Libby + Draigo + some Paladins in a fight, as that ends up being 900+pts of models even for just five or so Pallies. Against small squads, especially those without IC support, you can charge them with 2+ Assault Squads; you'll soak some wounds from Halberds, but your Fists and Meltaguns should carry the day pretty easily.

 

Most Draigowing lists are pure rock armies; they throw a huge, inflexible threat at you and try to beat your face in with it. If you force them to do things they're bad at (like holding multiple objectives or chase you across the board), their weaknesses become readily apparent. Trying to out-rock them (e.g. by bringing Vindicators) is playing right into their plan by playing strength against strength- Imperial Guard might be able to pull that off, or a LasPlas list, but DoA will not.

 

Not sure exactly what points level you're playing at but it sounds like you have a lot invested into your HQ units- Dante, Libby, and HG is probably waaaaaay to much at anything below 2000pts. Honestly, I wouldn't bother with Dante anywhere but a "pure" Sanguinary Guard list, and likewise wouldn't use SG in a DoA list, as they don't bring a lot that you specifically need.

 

(If you have Missile Devs mixed in, which is I think the best way to run DoA these days, you'll have a much easier time of things, as you can force saves and each failure ends up costing him heavily- either he puts the wound on Draigo, which makes most of his fancy protections meaningless, or he risks losing a Paladin. If he runs a Land Raider or Stormraven version, you will almost certainly have to sacrifice a unit to de-mech him, but beyond that everything above pretty much applies.)

[SnorriSnorrison]

*snip*

 

Now a fully decked out 10 Man DC with LeMartes, with all PW and JP's costs 650 pts

On the charge you can cause 19.56 unsaved wounds at Init 5.

 

Using all TH's costs 800 pts (ouch)...

Lemartes would cause 1.33 wounds at Init 5

and the DC would kill 9.75 DEAD paladins at Init 1

 

*snip*

 

 

Dude, Lemartes is init 7 on the charge. Screw those halberds! :D

 

 

Snorri

[Brother Landrain]

*snip*

 

Now a fully decked out 10 Man DC with LeMartes, with all PW and JP's costs 650 pts

On the charge you can cause 19.56 unsaved wounds at Init 5.

 

Using all TH's costs 800 pts (ouch)...

Lemartes would cause 1.33 wounds at Init 5

and the DC would kill 9.75 DEAD paladins at Init 1

 

*snip*

 

 

Dude, Lemartes is init 7 on the charge. Screw those halberds! :D

 

 

Snorri

 

Opps, missed that...

 

So he gives a Paladin nothin'but a flesh wound...

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Draigowing can actually put a good number of scoring units on the table if necessary by breaking the ten man Paladin units into combat squads and using the Grand Strategy to make psyflemen score. My current 2k list could have up to six scoring units if I feel it's beneficial. The psyflemen sit on objectives and blast away from far across the table. Also the army can deep strike and outflank so they can to a large degree be where they want.

 

Draigowing is not only a strong melee army - they can also shoot very well at midrange and have a high rate of fire... Psycannons and stormbolters armed with psybolt ammo. Psyflemen are cheap and provide excellent long range shooting.

 

I thought about it some more - the question is how to beat Draigowing with a DoA army. Here are some tips that might help. A lot depends on the mission objectives. If it's killpoints it's gonna be a really tough uphill battle.

 

Your main advantage is speed. Your main disadvantage is the short range of your weapons. You are also at a disadvantage in close combat. Assuming the Paladins have lots of halberds and a Brotherhood banner they will absolutely murder just about if not every unit we have in melee. Even if they don't have halberds they can absorb attacks that don't inflict instant death then grind away. So I think the best approach is to play cat and mouse... Deep strike outside of their charge arc, keep out of LoS from their guns then go in for the kill late in the game with melta pistols blazing away. I think you are going to need some luck as well.

 

Take lots of stormshields, melee weapons that ignore armor saves and lots and lots of meltas. I was thinking a Librarian with Fear of the Darkness could be a useful tool but it can be hooded plus a smart Draigowing player will have the psyflemen close by their Paladins which is a -4 Ld penalty due to the reinforced Aegis... So it's probably not going to go off.

 

The Sanguinor is our one model that can fight them on equal footing.

 

G :D

[Laughingdagger]

Sanguinor + Lemmy JP Death company.

 

If they want to tango, we can dance just as well.

[BigBaals]

a DOA army really cannot deal with Draigo and the Paladins.

 

Pretty much this. I've played vs Draigowing about 5-6 times now and have been close to a draw once. My worst result was a 1-13 Kill Point loss.

Halberds negate our main combat advantage (of going first) and, even with multi-asaults, if they get off a power like Sanctuary/Shrouding (whichever causes dangerous terrain tests to charge) it depletes your chances even more - like losing your three LC\SS Honour Guard and you Libby in one charge (yes it happened, no I wasn't happy!).

Also wound allocation across their full strength squad leaves you often with 10 power weapons hitting back.

I asked how to beat them on Nurglez's thread in the OI forum and the general opinion was either tailor your list 100% with plamsa devastators and Vindicators etc or you're going to find it nigh impossible.

Nurglez went to a 1,750 tournament last weekend and won all four games and didn't once lose his 'deathstar' squad. Demoralising huh?

 

Here's a quote from the thread from Black Orange, who, as a lot of you know, know's his way round a Blood Angel army pretty well:

 

 

Black Orange - Little question for you.

 

Just briefly, how do you think you'd fight against Paladins along the lines of your or Nurglez's (i.e 10 man Draigo deathstar) lists with a Blood Angel assault based force?

 

I don't want to distract too much from the main thread but thought it'd be interesting being an experienced BA general as you are. RAS don't do enough damage to avoid dying once struck back - bolt pistols aren't much of a worry and the odd melta gun doen't have the chance for more than one kill really. DC are impaled on halberds before they hit. Lone Stormravens are left on the floor due to 6 psycannon pointed their way. Is there anything in a 'typical' BA assault force can do? Multiple assault with everything at once?

 

Also, to everyone else, for us non-Paldins looking in on this is there anything (except for maybe Dark Eldar) that worries your 10 man squads? Any units you really, really don't want to see bearing down on you? Be interesting to see what you say :)

 

GK deathstar is a bad matchup for BA DoA. I'm not going to try to blow any smoke about it either. I guess the only chance I could see is spamming as much melta as possible.

 

G

 

Sucks to be us sometimes!

 

I think this about sums it up. I hate to say it, but I think our most competitive lists are now very Razorspammy and I for one don't want to play another variation of Vanilla Angel Wolves. One of our best local players does some hardcore Draigowing with the usual Warpquake shannanigans, Dreads with lots of shots, etc. It's an impossible match up - I've never even come close to winning with DoA - and the Hybrid lists haven't faired too much better. I think you need to tailor your list to GK, which is incredibly unfortunate. Librarians are a godsend, but they don't stop the I6 Halbred. If you think GK have great combat prowess, get within 24 inches of them for there shooting phase.

 

Just my opinion.

[AustonT]

With a stick in his sleep.

Because on a horse, with a lance; he's unstoppable.

[Atlantic]

I played 3 2500 point games against a draigo gk list.

 

He ran 6 paladin squads, 2 razorbacks, storm raven, vindicare assassin. Two of his squads were able to outflank somehow due to GK shenanigans I am unfamiliar with.

 

Anyhow, in all seriousness I think the best way to handle draigo and the other paladins is with massed bolter fire.

 

I wasn't playing with a great list (sort of hybrid mech, w/ mephiston and some bikes), but I was able to put enough bolt shots out to eliminate one squad per turn.

 

I had 4 missle devastators pop his storm raven of first turn.

My lascannon razorbacks popped his razorbacks.

 

I then turned every gun in my army on each squad as they entered rapid fire range.

 

 

In all seriousness, I am more and more a fan of giving my death company bolters. They do lose one attack in close combat and do not benefit from ws 5 and all that, but that is also a massive volley of bolt fire where you do not have to worry about initiative. (Yah genestealers, I'm looking at you)

 

Because of FNP 10 DC will shoot about as well as a squad of GK Terminators and your opponent will probably pull from the front to keep you from charging him, which is totally fine, especially after he eats another volley from the rest of your army.

[Drunken Angel]

Reading all this I see several directions, bolter and shoot them to hell with as much shooting and low AP as possible.

I run all Jump packers and like the OP dont have a medium range high output firebase option.

The tactical option when using a DOA list seems to be destroy the psyfleman and less robust non halberd units when and if they ever get left exposed.

Stay off the board till 3rd turn if possible and hit only what is left exposed. All those high point models need to be killing stuff otherwise their worthless.

Jump packers can stay out of the way of footsloggers and priests give some protection with FNP, once the GK S8 shooting is gone.

 

Otherwise at all times stay out of reach its only 11 bloody models, if there are halberds everywhere maybe this is one list where we need to change tactics and stay out of combat.

Kill a few exposed units and stay out of range, let the rest of the rock walk around the board it seems a draigowing will be walking because vehicles that can carry paladins and terminators eat models and there are few enough models in a Draigo GK list as it is.

 

Crowe lists and other builds are a seperate issue and also difficultto deal with. All GK are hard nuts in combat and hard shooting at most any range. There are no real weaknesses in their lists except low model count and their GS can some what fix the troops issues. I am building a GK list and it seems to me the one thing that is universal in a GK list build is that I6 buff.

 

 

All the GK lists need to kill your units to get their high points back. Deny them that chance and you are on your way to forcing the GK player to extend his lines.

To extend his lines he leaves something open, he cant be everywhere you as a jump packer can. Pop the psyfledreads with an infernus burst in the back and keep moving.

If it needs to be done combat squad and send in suicide melta squads to trash transports.

Yes there are Stike Squads and interceptors with their shunts and blocks on Deep striking but this is a draigowing we are talking about.

 

As a Blood Angel jump pack player theres not much you can do about I6 halberds and high wound Paladins except be a better general and wait for the next codex change.

I am picking a Dark Angel codex which will no doubt have a Dark Angels bike army list that runs all new long range Antares fletchett cannons firing unobtainium fallen splinter fletchets that are able to ID paladins from 36 inches.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Tactical squads will make a comeback.

 

G ;)

[SamaNagol]

...in 6th Edition.

 

....maybe.

 

.......but unlikely.

[Sir Blayse]

I have had horrible luck with my DoA vs. GK. Halberds are nearly impossible to deal with and seem to be the only option taken...

 

I'm thinking HG with either Melta's or Plasma are decent, but may start running two dev's. Just use the 3 ML and 1 Las setting. In last game I managed to score my few kills from failed 2+ armor saves. At least the ML's will negate the 2 wound part and the Las will drop one almost every time. Plasma with FNP should be able to drop several at decent range and with the combined dev's seems like a good way to deal with super-expensive uber-units. Still will have to be careful with how I play it, but seems like a good option.

 

Otherwise, Razor spam with lot's of AssCan and Las should do a good job, just throw in a dakka baal and 2 vindi's for this one. Not as fun to run as DoA, but should be able to win.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Halberds plus Hammerhand wreck DoA in melee. That +1I really hurts a lot plus GK TDA have grenades now... It's kind of unfair. Oh well .

 

G :lol:

[Fortunate Son]

Mephiston doesn't drop in... (and I don't have the GK dex, so I'm not sure what I'm talking about)

 

BUT, wouldn't he put some serious rerolling I7 s10 smack down on one of these types of units?

That's instant death for everyone that fails their invul.

 

of course, I'm not sure he'd survive the round either...

 

What do you guys think?

[SamaNagol]

Mephiston vs 5 Paladins is a double knock out.

 

Mephiston vs Draigowing which DOESN'T take a Librarian as well is very potent.

[Alkana]

Vindicators work pretty well. As does massed bolter fire.