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Dealing with outflankers and deep strikers as SW


Belfast

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My local meta has changed pretty drastically as of late to feature outflanking/deepstriking units pretty heavily.  Whether it is BA's with 2 baal preds and a dante + death company squad, HQ's getting the outflank personal trait and finding a way to get him in a LR, or war walkers coming in and killing troops/vehicles behind my aegis line, if you show up in my back field, I usually lose.

 

My typical set up at 1850pts is usually like this:

 

1-2x rune priest

sometimes a lord or WGBL - usually TH/SS, runic armor or TDA

2x 6 man LF squads, 3 ML, 2 LC

Aegis D line with quad

4x 10 man GH squads (3 with double plas, 1 with double melta and all with Banners) 3 of which have rhinos

vindicator + siege shield

2x Lone Wolves - 2x fen wolfs, CF, SS, TDA

 

What I'm finding is that my 2 long fang squads and my back field GH's are usually not enough to deal with the threats that come into my back field and I could really use some insight on how my other SW players deal with this.

 

The most obvious answer in my list right now would be to keep the LW's back in my line to be a response unit when ever I know this is coming.  The problem with this is that if they're outflanking or deep striking and they don't end up in my back field, I will have not moved my LW's for 2 rounds on average and with how slow they are, they haven't been soaking up fire or will be out of position to do any good.  Forces me to essentially waste 200 pts when it doesn't work.

 

Another option would be to keep a 2nd GH squad back there and just try to block easy landing spots or even a table edge behind my D line so that I will at least get cover or force difficult terrain tests when they can move.  If I were to go this route, I think my list would benefit greatly from adding bran redmaw so I would get 2 outflanking GH squads and can easily keep the other 2 back without feeling like I'm lacking pressure against my opponent. This would also free up my lone wolves should I still be able to afford them.  Having to buy imperial armour 11 and finding an acceptable model for the redmaw is the biggest issue I have with this.  

 

From here, dropping 1-2 LW's and picking up either a large fen wolf squad to be use'd like kroot or a TWC squad that I keep to respond would probably be my best bet.  I don't have that many fen wolves but I do have the unassembled models for 6 TWC and a TWC Lord so I may have to definitely give that a shot.  I'm still a tad sketchy about using TWC since str 10 insta kills them and ap 3 chews them up.

 

Do you plan for this situation in your take all comers lists and if so, how do you deal with it?

It's about deployment. If you know they're outflanking then you'll need to deploy in such a way as to anticipate it. Pick a corner and pile up in it. String out squads along a table edge to give them no room to outflank there. Spread out the remaining models to give them no place to deep strike (without misshaping). Use Rhinos to either block edges or to form a "wall" so that they can DS or outflank and then shoot your troops, make them shoot the Rhinos first. Your AGL could form the outermost "ring" with the Rhinos behind it, and then all your dudes behind them. If there's no room inside the "ring" to outflank or DS, then they'll have to come outside it. Then they're shooting at Rhinos with a 4+ cover save, and even if they do destroy them, oh well.
Yeah, for horde and melee-intensive armies, I like to pile into a fortified corner as far away from them as possible and pick them off as they approach. Malachi's suggestion at blocking off areas for potential outflanking with large masses like vehicles is a good idea.
It's about deployment. If you know they're outflanking then you'll need to deploy in such a way as to anticipate it. Pick a corner and pile up in it. String out squads along a table edge to give them no room to outflank there. Spread out the remaining models to give them no place to deep strike (without misshaping). Use Rhinos to either block edges or to form a "wall" so that they can DS or outflank and then shoot your troops, make them shoot the Rhinos first. Your AGL could form the outermost "ring" with the Rhinos behind it, and then all your dudes behind them. If there's no room inside the "ring" to outflank or DS, then they'll have to come outside it. Then they're shooting at Rhinos with a 4+ cover save, and even if they do destroy them, oh well.

 

That is a really good point. I usually tend to fortify in one corner but blocking their access makes a ton of sense and should be pretty easy to do with just a gh squad or two. Thanks for the info!

On another vein of this topic, I'd be interested to hear experienced Wolves' thoughts on fighting Chaos Demon armies, particularly those heavy on *!&^~#! Flamers. I've gone with refused flank deployments (bunched up, my first game against them) and standard gunlines and got slaughtered both times. The real killer is the 12" move of Flamers, which means unless the deep strike is phenomenally unlucky they have the ability to reposition to the best of their advantage before burning my Marines to a cinder. This is the only DS army I've had a significant problem with so far and one that I haven't found the Wolf answer to yet. (Probably need to play more games then... :()

I recently posted a topic on LWs manning the icarus, makes it tough to kill and diversifies your threats.

 

Sounds to me like people have adapted to your style of list and set about killing your firebase. As you said this is one of the main functions of a lone wolf. Overall though assigning a couple lone wolfs to guard duty is worth the trade off to likely foil a main portion of your opponents strategy, and they should have no problem doing that.

 

I also like the idea of land speeders since this is a tactic I use. hf/hf speeders just for example can put some serious hurt for cheap and if you deploy them out of the way your opponent wont risk outflanking/DS to kill them because they will be left too far to threaten your firebase before you pound them.

 

Personally I like to build a mixture of counters into my lists; either a dread or lone wolf for guard duty of my firebase, sometimes land speeders, then often a 'cleaner crew' such as TW lord or TWC. I also rely heavily on drop pods, almost always 3 which allows me to bring in what I call an 'eraser unit'. Its pretty much a rapid response unit to counter hammers or just wipe something thats causing trouble. This includes units like you mentioned, although this unit is subject to who goes first. The upside is they can kill or seriously cripple most things and I get freedom of deployment via DS and the first strike.

 

btw that castling comment was hilarious.

replace LF , vindicator and one GH pack with an IG ally detachment . more targets at homes base . bubble wrap for your LF and a stronger fire base . It will also give you access to more targets your opponent will want to counter fast[if you take a manticor] or to flyers[if you take a vendetta].
replace LF , vindicator and one GH pack with an IG ally detachment . more targets at homes base . bubble wrap for your LF and a stronger fire base . It will also give you access to more targets your opponent will want to counter fast[if you take a manticor] or to flyers[if you take a vendetta].

 

This is an option I considered but I'm not quite ready to drop that much on an army that the most I would do with it is use as an ally. I already have about 3/4's of a ravenwing army from trading DV and a bunch of old bikes I haven't assembled, a start on a necron army, and my old BT and Kson armies I haven't touched in 4 years lol. No new armies for me for a while!

Every Daemons player I have faced seemed to be completely terrified by a rune priest in a transport a midfield casting Tempest Wrath.

Honestly I dont see tempests wrath doing much, the most problematic daemons have 2 wounds and an invuln save. Maybe its more of a psychological factor?

Every Daemons player I have faced seemed to be completely terrified by a rune priest in a transport a midfield casting Tempest Wrath.

Honestly I dont see tempests wrath doing much, the most problematic daemons have 2 wounds and an invuln save. Maybe its more of a psychological factor?

 

my old daemon opponent was scared when she read what it did, but then laughed as she saw what it did. its never as effective as it appears to be.

 

and if your opponent is sneaky, they'll bring Fateweaver to re-roll any fails.

 

WLK

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