Playing SM's last weekend!

[Da Taz]

I played a game fighting SM's last weekend. And they allied with Spacewolfs! Oh boy! Ended on turn one! He fired I died! I had the following:

Cannoness

three Exorcists

one squad of Domms. with flammers and a Immo.

Three SOB squads with Immo.

Priest with Death cults.

 

I had one squad with their Immo on the left flank, then two Exorcists with the priest and deathcult in the middle, two squads with the Domms and Cannoness on the right along with one Exorcists on the far right.

 

He had one Tac squad on each flank with Plasma Cannon, one heavy support squad in the middle on top of a building with lascannons, three Spacewolf heavy support on each floor below them with missile launchers. Two Spacewolf tac squads in drop pods and one empty drop pod. His leader was in with the heavy support.

 

He ended up with first move and fire. When he did OMG! dropped one pod right beside my left flank Exorcists. when he fired he ended up killing one Exorcist, three Immo and a couple of Sisters. When I fired, I killed eight SM' s and Spacewolves. We called it then. I was facing at least two Plasma Cannons, three Lascannons and around 12 to 18 missile launchers and he still had one squad left to drop. Just to much firepower for me to fight!

 

He had around sixty SM's and I had 32 Sisters and such, along with three tanks and four APC's. Which went away fast! Maybe he didn't follow the rules, but, I havn't checked yet! Still in shock!

 

However, we did play kill team in the next game and I ended up taking out all of his SM's! and only lost four Sherephim in doing so!

 

So far my friend and I stand at two games to him and one Kill team to me! Maybe next weekend I will win one!

[Collective Consciousness]

Well... That is certainly an armylist. As far as I can tell it is legal. Not shore you can win aganst it save excellent luck. Maby try bubble wrapping your exos with a lot of battle sisters but I just don't know how you can handle that many devs especially if you get second turn. I would drop the death cults for arco-flagellants to save some points and I think s5 t5 and 4 attacks on the charge is better that s3 power wepons but that's just me.

[Da Taz]

Just pointed it out. Yep he could do that. However, I don't want to play that force every again!

[Naminé]

Sounds like you were a little unlucky, be it on saves, losing first turn or simply not having night fighting, which would have helped you immensely.

 

Next time you know you're facing drop pods, try castling up at one side to make his drops dangerous. Play to the objectives and clear your own area first and suddenly he is a lot less mobile.

 

A multicharge from your DCA will make him think twice about podding in close too.

 

I would recommend playing the game through next time though, you could still have won and if nothing else it lets you learn more about the potential of your army :)

[WarriorFish]

Marine horde usually takes people by surprise when it appears, so it may have been a bit of a bad match up and the result of poor luck but as Naminé said you should play it next time. Even if you do lose you should learn vital lessons to formulate a better strategy next time!

Can you give us a better break down of his army? If all else fails I bet Sisters can do better bolter/power armour spam than Marines

[march10k]

How many points was that?  At first glance, it seems like you are playing with no more than 4/5 as many points as him.He had over 1000 points just in naked marines, not counting HQ.  Also, you only mentioned one HQ...I assume he had one SM one and one SW one?  Then add in his heavy weapons spam and drop pods...

 

I see two issues.  First is the small size of your squads.  Three five sister scoring units isn't enough against any enemy no matter what the scenario is.  I would never leave home without at least thirty battle sisters.  The requirements of a scenario don't scale with the points limit of a game, and neither should your scoring units, except possibly to a very limited extent in body count.  I wouldn't be opposed to, for example, squads of eight instead of ten, if you're playing a low points game.

 

But the point is that your need for scoring units is a fixed cost.  At low points, you can't afford to skimp on battle sisters in order to squeeze in more dominions and exorcists, and no matter how high the points limit, you'll never see more than five objectives, so you don't need "X number of scoring models per Y points," you can taper that off fairly soon.  At 1200-1500 points, where it looks like you're playing, I'd either go with 3x10 scoring squads, or 4x8.  3x5 is not adequate.  

 

Besides, if you give the battle sister squads dual melta, they can fill the role of a dominion squad, with the reduced melta offset by scoring status.  Against tanks, preferred enemy means you'll almost always get two penetrating hits (nearly a 5/6 hit rate and 2D6 AP), so your chances of an explosion are not dramatically worse.  And against infantry, even termies, rerolling ones to wound and volume of fire are actually more valuable than the dominion meltas' AP and two extra shots.

 

I would keep the exorcists.  Then take four squads of eight battle sisters with dual melta, simalcrum, and rhino.  Add in a canoness, then add battle sisters to each squad until the rhinos are full.  If you still have points, squeeze in a few laud hailers on the rhinos as "preferred enemy insurance."  If you're going first, spread the exorcists out so that a single drop pod doesn't endanger all three of them, and so that any drop pod that does come in near them leaves the enemy squad stranded and out of the fight after it potentially kills the exorcist (obviously, run like hell if a podding squad whiffs on its alpha strike-18" in a direction that's NOT towards an objective).  Line up the rhinos to rush the enemy's devastator bunker.  If you're going second, bubble wrap the exorcists in rhinos, then bubble wrap the rhinos in battle sisters.  You can always board the transports before they move on turn one, depending on the outcome of the enemy pod strike.

 

In spite of me telling you to spread out the exorcists (if going first), I think spreading out was one of your mistakes in the first game.  The exorcists should spread out for safety (again, if going first, if second, castle up and bubble wrap them) because they have good range so being dispersed doesn't compromise their ability to shoot properly.   Your units that have 24" range or less should be kept together, at least until it's time for that turn 4/5 objective grab.  That lets them apply overwhelming firepower against any enemy that comes against them instead of fighting against marines as one squad against one squad.

 

/edit/

 

By the way...you haven't seen a marine horde yet, lol.  I can fit a command squad with HQ character, five ten man plas/plas tactical squads, two ten man assault squads, a ten man missile devastator squad, and a ten man lascannon devastator squad into the "standard" 1850 points.  That's 96 marines with 13 heavy and 5 special weapons.  It's also (substituting the command squad for the sixth tactical squad) a "perfect" battle company.  Against that, your only recourse would be to spam 270 point 20-sister (plus dual melta and simalcrum) squads and then a canoness.  Still, 121 sisters with meltaguns against 96 marines with lascannons, missile launchers, and plasma is not going to go well.  Marines can be nasty when they leave the sexy stuff at home and just spam power armor and high-S/low-AP weapons!

[Kabbala]

Also, if I'm reading your opponents "list" correctly, he had too many long fangs. You mention three SW heavy support squads when you can only have one by the ally FOC.

[march10k]

...unless SW was the base list, which makes sense if you want to spam heavy weapons!

[Kabbala]

Ah yes, my bad :) that does make sense not that I read it that way.

[Da Taz]

We were playing 1500 points. I do believe he was playing SW with some SM as allies. So yes there were a lot of heavy support. However, if we had played the following turns I do believe I would have lost my whole force. There is no way (unless I roll endless saves!) I could win with that much firepower at me. Turn two would have seen him drop frag missiles on my sisters unit by unit until they were wiped out. So we called it and played a game of kill team. Where I whipped him! I guess I just wasn't set up to fight that force that day. Maybe I should have taken Repressors and a full ten girl squad in place of each one of the six girl squads and Immo.s! Might have tried some allies from the IG. Oh well better luck next time!

[Fibonacci]

All I can do is guess but t sunds like there was not enough terrain.  Deploy in cover and out of LOS when you can.  Get your cover saves against the plasma cannons but really on turn one they sould not be able to reach you at all.  The AV 13 front of Exorcists should be able to handle 12 missile launcher shots. 1/3 will miss, 5/6 will not penitrate and at least 1/3 will make a cover save.

 

I take an ADL almost every time and drop pods are an easy First Blood kill.  It is much more versital than just an anti-air gun. 

 

Also, when I go against a drop pod, Deathwing assault or any other form of first turn deepstrikers I go second and deploy back closer to the table edge.  When the partial army drops in they may do some damage but the then face 100% of my army with their drop pod survivors.

 

So it sounds like either an incredible bit of lopsided luck or there just was not enough line of sight blocking terrain on the table.

[*Furyou Miko]

I was assuming he was using kraks to wipe out that many Sisters at a time. You must have rolled really badly on your saves to be taken down by frag missiles...

[Naminé]

I agree with Miko, that's why I said you must have been really unlucky to lose so much of the force to missiles.

 

Sometimes, it happens though, and you can't roll a save no matter how hard you try.  I've lost Exorcists to the turn 1, single missile shot before despite 2+ cover saves... very frustrating but there it is :p

 

Seriously though, It's never over until it's over.  luck can turn, and in an alpha strike list like that, once he's hit you then it's not as bad from then on.

[march10k]

The ADL is a really good idea against devastator spam...repressors would have been ok in this particular situation, but I wouldn't take them in an all-comers list, they're too expensive and usually not drastically better than rhinos in the primary purpose of a transport, which is getting the sisters safely into rapid fire range.  They wouldn't have been great in this situation, by the way, since they only have AV13 frontally, and getting flank or rear shots isn't hard, especially when you have drop pods to work with...

[Fibonacci]

I think what we are all saying is ... don't give up automatically.  Sure, this time may have been bad but don't be afraid to give it another go against drop pods and missile spam some time.

[mince on toast]

wow that sux! a ADL would help for sure if playing defensive, buble wrap those exos with that and some sisters

 

or

 

go all psycho .. which is more fun.. n chop those marines up with repentia , Death cults n priest etc

 

but in all seriousness try reserving some units , he cant kill it if its not on the board !

[Smurfben]

No but he can kill even fewer units, which would lead to an even faster tabling! A friend of mine is always getting tabled because he keeps reserving too many units. I think you can put this game down mainly to a bad match up :(

[march10k]

Ok, so if it's a worst-case scenario, how do you make adjustments to have a fighting chance without causing fundamental problems with the list that cause even more problems against a wider variety of enemies?  IMHO, "more bodies" is usually a good answer...

[WarriorFish]

Indeed, when in doubt add more Sisters. Drown them in righteous bolter fire and power armour! :P

[march10k]

Ahem....power armor for some...rags and eviscerators for others...the point is that everything you think you might want to add to the list should be weighed against the opportunity cost of "MOAR BODIES!"

[WarriorFish]

Said like a true Guardsman, march, I think you're in the wrong section :lol:

[march10k]

I did refrain from "send in the next wave!"

 

Seriously, though, 6th edition is all about volume of fire.  More bodies is the answer...it provides not only answering dakka, it gives you a chance to have a few models left alive at the end of the game.

[WarriorFish]

Definitely, it's why I like to have cheaper units so I can have more of them. You don't need to sink points in to a unit to make it effective, especially not in a Sisters army. I think we have one of the best Troop units in the game so it's an easy fall back option for us :)