Uplifting Infantry Primer: Killing Monstrous Creatures

[Quicksilver117]

So this is a question I don't feel I have gotten a good answer to yet. How does a good emperor loving, cardboard wearing, flaslight toter kill raid boss toughness MC's like Dreadknights, Hive Tyrants, or Emperor Forbode Eldar Wraithknights? I have a guy at the store I played at with a very strong and balanced Eldar list with a couple of Wave serpents, some jetbikes, some psykers, and a dancing giant who plays soccer with my whole army. Never got within a lightyear of beating him (with the exception of one random 2v2 Kill Points game where he was allied with sisters and I was allied with KALDOR DRAIGO, in which we did not kill a single eldar unit but chopped apart all the msu sisters units we could hit winning the silly match by 1kp) and I have no clue how to bring down. It has killed ~500-1200 points by itself in every single match. The only major weapon I see having any effect is Paskisher and sad to say, Eldar Players have in fact heard of Cadia's tank ace so the master of rending disaster has been football kicked or Serpent Shielded clean off the board everytime. Is there anything in the Guard's arsenal to fight these powerful menaces? or is this the moment of Apothoesis where the Emperor shouts down from the Golden Throne "ALLIES IDIOT!!" I am not worried about  winning a bunch of games (Guard trying to capture maelstrom objectives is challenging) but I just don't want to get tabled everytime before he beats me. And I would like to kill it once. I know it can happen, the Grey Knights guy killed it once.

[Aspecti]

Psykers with access to Divination, cast Misfortune(all hits on the target have Rending) on that Wraithknight and charge it with a blob of Conscripts with a couple of priests and it will take a dirt nap quite easily ;) Heck, even those flashlights become deadly if you get Misfortune off on the target.

[Quicksilver117]

That is a big if and when it succeeds would be true justice to have our enemies greatest weapon brought down by the lowliest of Guardsmen. Seems unreliable at best, but dang when it lands.

[WarriorFish]

Plasma or melta always works well, you can spam them relatively easily if you'd like too. Vets make good platforms for this. There's also the old classic of lobbing giant shells at things until they go away, Guard can muster some nasty strength on tanks and artillery that will have better odds at wounding through the save.

The answer to such things is usually through numbers as weight of dice will blast through anything and the Guard can muster plenty of dice to throw at things. Against an elite army you're better off playing the numbers advantage, as their relative strengths get diluted across more (cheaper) units.

I'm moving this topic to the barracks where you will get more answers

[Quicksilver117]

WarriorFish is a hero among of the Pices and Imperium. The issue I see and have definitely run into myself is that despite have superiority of dice and tons of large shells to lob at those rascally rabbits is that the only matches that I am even participating in are those where I go first. Since everything good I want to blast away with is heavy or immobile, I need to have a large presence on the battlefield at the start of the game. That presence is utterly shattered after my enemies first turn. I have never had a heavy weapons squad or unit of jokaero with a Psyker survive first turn and they have been in cover every game I have tried. I have had a single Leman Russ out of 3 manage to survive a whole game!!! But that was only once. I have only ever had one unit that I felt performed admirably and deserved the praise of the emperor, a vendetta, who knocked an exorcist a turn off the field like clockwork. And Yarrick who stood up twice, he is pretty amazing. So, I have been looking at building an Elysians list, but I am worried I am grasping at straws or am just lacking in tactical acumen. People here seem to win, but I never even get close. I got beat by pre-new-codex blood angels and he only ever killed a model with his 1 Death Company and his 1 Assault Marine unit (Mephiston casting invisibility was rough-Drop a pie plate this guard player, I dare ya, but he never attacked just cast spells). I study the tactics closely but at the end, the meat grinder is over and he has units while I do not. Is Vassal worth it as a way to train possibly?

[librisrouge]

Lascannons my friend. Eight or more, in infantry squads, with psykers and orders to help out.

[CommissarZac]

Vanquishers and Demolishers, Paskishers with blobs of conscripts, and cammo netting.  Set up shop in terreain and let the cover saves stack.  +1 for the cammo net, +1 for the blob, +1 for the terrain.  gives a 4+ cover save.  The Vanquisher will pop enemy armor and MCs from afar.  plus if you take a squadron of punishers with pask, thats 96 shots.

[Axagoras]

if you want to kill a wraithknight run some leman russ company command vanquishers with beast slayer rounds from IA 1v2, s8 ap 2 ID blast, one failed save and the wraithknight is no more. and its vanquisher shells are great at forcing enemy vehicles to jink or to not fire their serpent shields

[shandwen]

Also ally in some Dark Angels to boost your tank survival rate. Azreal hq-to go into a conscript blob to give the whole unit a 4++ (among many other benifits), a techmarine on bike with a PFG to sit near your tanks to give them a 4++, and a tac squad as tax. Oh, and black knights are a good counter to everything as well, with -1 toughness grenades and plasma talons. For guardsmen there is no bigger cheese the DA.

Edit: I am awful at spelling...

[wulfgar hammerfist]

Azrael is a bit expensive for what he does but I like your line of thought. Perhaps a librarian with a PFG attached to the blob squad? He could also buff the squad further with psychic powers and be a threat to characters with his force weapon.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

Tempestus Scions with hot shot lasguns, using the sniper order can do it. Sniper rifles always wound on 4's and on 6's resolve at AP2. Force him to take a ton of 5++ saves if he takes the Scattershield (I would always). If he doesn't, massed AP3 sniper shots will bring it down (since the wraithknight has a 3+ armor) easy. 

 

I love Scions, I have a supplementary force of them that are just nasty. They are so worth having in your force or as your force (like me, take allies though to plug the holes in the army list). 

[FashaTheDog]

One of the overlooked solutions to big giant death MCs is to not bother actively trying to kill them.  You simply throw a 50 man blob at them with a Commissar way in the back who will take a good two game turns to reach (do this by deploying blob in a T shape with the Commissar against your table edge and advance the platoon stringing out models to max coherency with the Commissar never moving off the table edge until pile in moves).  You tie up the MC by charging it and using the breathing room for killing other things so you can properly focus on it when the tar pit finally dies.  Holding down a lone MC killing machine like this does two things for you; first it regulates what it kills to something you want to see dead anyway and second, the giant melee blob can offer you some cover that in your shooting phase you can order yourself to ignore. 

 

You can take MCs in the assault with blob squads by using Primaris Psykers with Sanctic and perhps Biomancy, shooting to buff the unit with Hammerhand and/or Iron Arm (on the Psyker) while activating your force weapon.  Here Sanctic's perils on any double is not necessarily a bad thing as once you roll doubles, you get around a 14% chance of periling on result 6 and passing your leadership test so you get the 3+ invulnerable, fleshbane, and armorbane.  Even if you do lose the Psyker to perils, you have more so who cares.  At 75 points a Psyker, they are cheap enough you can take enough to make this work through numbers alone.  Even if you do not perils, or fail to get the good result, you can boost the force axe to S6 for Hammerhand or S7 for Iron Arm and make the attacks cause ID and have the power dice to force the result through.  While not quite as reliable, a force staff means you are initially S5 and can boost it to S7 or S8, depending on the power.  Hammerhand has the added benefit of making all your Guardsmen in the blob S5, allowing them to pile on the saves as he cannot kill them all and his big base will mean you may get loads of attacks, especially with a good charge.  Since you do not want a Commissar in this unit putting down periling Psykers, ally in a fearless IC from some Battle Brothers list to keep the tar pit in place. 

 

If Forgeworld is allowed in your lists, look to Field Artillery and Rapiers as well as Heavy Artillery Batteries instead of vehicle mounted big guns.  They are T7 against shooting and can easily find decent cover saves.  A Heavy Mortar or Thudd Gun will pile on wounds while safely hidden away behind things and enough saves to take will eventually mean failed saves.  Rapiers are cheap S9 AP2 twin-linked medium ranged threats that can toss out a few reasonably reliable cover and invulnerable saves.  Because artillery units are not vehicles, you can issue orders to them. 

 

All of these ideas work better with two Company Command Squads.  With a pair of Company Command Squads, you get four ignores cover or monster/tank hunter orders to hand out.  Here the 25 point Tactical Auto-Reliquary can be mighty handy.  The Platoon Commands also can add more orders if you stay away from Veterans and have at least three platoons of various sizes and armament to help you really flood the table with disposable units that are kept fairly cheap.

 

These are somewhat dependent upon you running loads of infantry units so anything that you do lose is an unconcerned loss to you.  With 20-30+ units, Purge the Alien will mean you will need to table your foe to win, but the remaining missions will be a case of your foe having a very hard time killing all of your threats to him in a turn or two as you have spread your firepower across such a large number of units. 

 

If you run the Krieg Assault list from IA12, you can actually take this one step further by deploying all your artillery units close to your table edge and having three or four minimum sized platoons with a plasma or meltagun in each squad (maybe two in the Platoon Commands if you wish to splurge).  You then declare the Forlorn Hope and just throw all your platoons away every game turn so the destroyed platoons go into ongoing reserves, allowing you to walk replacements on in front of your artillery and lose them again in the next turn to repeat throughout the game.  Because 25 Guardsmen, when kept tightly packed and away from cover die really easily, your foe may be forced to watch as you keep getting new waves that he needs to kill, but cannot permanently get rid of.  It does take some practice to get the hang of ensuring you properly recycle your army like this, but it gives you an attrition based list that can see you win the game after losing more points worth of stuff than the game size.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

You could just throw conscripts at it until the game ends with it having killed nothing bu meaningless fodder, while you focus on the other stuff. Grabbing objectives, killing his objective holders, killing his warlord, getting first blood. Stack up the victory points on him, and kill his stuff, until the wraithknight is the only thing left to deal with. 

 

Not going to lie, this is how most of my opponents deal with my riptides. 

[librisrouge]

While many might consider this to be meaningless advice, I kinda do, consider Ratlings if a single Wraithknight is that big a problem. 100 points gets you ten with a +3 cover behind an Aegis. They'll strip a couple of wounds a turn from it and eventually kill it in 2-3 rounds.

[Quicksilver117]

To Ulrick and Fasha, how do you gain large amounts of victory points with an army that is highly immobile and extremely fragile out of cover (and in since everything has ignores cover including other guard with orders)? To Lib, Ratlings is a new option. I guess I don't know enough about Dark Angels, so I will definitely take a look at them now while I study their affects on my battlefield. Why would you need another codex for Fearless, don't priests do that for you with zealot(apologies forewarning, as a guard player, I have never actually dealt a wound in assault<-fact)? Also, just having run Bassies a few times, it does make me a touch sad that I feel like I have to use Heavy Artillery Batteries from Forge world to keep up (which I haven't bought yet but am in the process of because orders). An aside, with Vendettas (which I love because as Lib pointed out, TL Lascannons are awesome) being 170 points are Thunderbolts a better choice for air support(if we are doing forgeworld we might as well do it strong)? Also Ulrick, Knox, TN is my hometown.

[Thoqqu]

I haven't played against one so I don't know how mobile it is but people seem to be suggesting tarpitting it quite a lot so I suppose that works best, add Yarrick just because he is the man.

 

You could also try sitting behind and aegis defence line with 2 platoons full of lascannons. 2+ cover is pretty neat and when the hwt are protected by endless masses of guardsmen it really is futile trying to remove them. (Have a row or 2 in front of them)

Consider adding ccs with aquila in a chimera with camo.

 

When all else fails, add deathstrikes. They might not win the game but they either distract the enemy or severely punish him/her for not dealing with them on time.

[WarriorFish]

Never forget target priority also applies to your opponent. He'll know what can hurt his big favourite unit and will target them - so you can predict what he can do quite reliably. It also means you need alternate options to fall back on and combine efforts with. Again, multiple units and avenues of attack are essential but there has been some excellent advice here so I don't have much to add :tu:

[Chefzilla]

One of the biggest and least used, in my experience, pluses for IG is orders. I see so many IG players forget about their orders and in my opinion orders can make or break an army. 'Bring It Down' gives your unit Tank Hunter/Monster Hunter. I face 'nids a lot and it just upsets my opponent when I demolish  his hive tyrant in 2 turns.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

To Ulrick and Fasha, how do you gain large amounts of victory points with an army that is highly immobile and extremely fragile out of cover (and in since everything has ignores cover including other guard with orders)? To Lib, Ratlings is a new option. I guess I don't know enough about Dark Angels, so I will definitely take a look at them now while I study their affects on my battlefield. Why would you need another codex for Fearless, don't priests do that for you with zealot(apologies forewarning, as a guard player, I have never actually dealt a wound in assault<-fact)? Also, just having run Bassies a few times, it does make me a touch sad that I feel like I have to use Heavy Artillery Batteries from Forge world to keep up (which I haven't bought yet but am in the process of because orders). An aside, with Vendettas (which I love because as Lib pointed out, TL Lascannons are awesome) being 170 points are Thunderbolts a better choice for air support(if we are doing forgeworld we might as well do it strong)? Also Ulrick, Knox, TN is my hometown.

 

I'm in a position of having not enough imperial guard to play a sizable game. I also don't have enough toys to support the boys. So I'm kinda stuck having to use allies to fill in the blanks in my army. I'm trying to work out a list using my Tempestus as vets, to see how that works, so I can get access to vendettas. I have to say, I'm bummed that there's no way to give vets the Hotshot las guns...

 

Speaking of Knox, where are you now?

[FashaTheDog]

I had forgotten about Zealot rule as it is not available or particularly necessary to a Krieg list as they already do not take morale checks to shooting casualties.  Good catch for the regular codex though.

 

Funny thing about foot Guard, they are only as immobile as you are too lazy to move large quantities of models.  I routinely run aggressive with the large platoon.  As you move the combined platoon, you spread out to minimize templates and block routes to your army that you do not wish your foe using.  If you are banking on heavy usage of Sanctic, using Gate of Infinity to deep strike a large combined squad is unexpected for many foes and can force them to rethink their plan.  It is not always the best option, but against template light foes, and if especially you can rush a Platoon Command Squad close enough to FRFSRF, it can allow you to ensure the entire unit can light up a foe.  Admittedly a very situational tactic, but one that presents itself just often enough to keep in the back of your mind to exploit.  Think of it as a Hail Mary that if it works once, it can help you in the future as word of the spectacularly unorthodox can cause some small degree of psychological warfare against your foes in future games, causing them to play more conservatively than they should in the future.  These past "moments of glory" where the odds were beaten and a bunch of the group hear about it or see it generally is not something people factor in to their plans, but it does occur often enough to be recognized and potentially exploited. 

 

Calling a Guard army that has more than 180 models fragile is actually a mistake that has cost many of my opponents the game.  See, individually each model is indeed fragile and entire units can die with minimal effort, but weight of numbers alone can make your army very tough as a whole.  The toughness of a list like this lies in the fact that each unit only provides a small amount to your aggregate firepower, perhaps a meltagun or a missile launcher, maybe a plasma gun and a lascannon together at most.  This translates to no unit's loss actually having any real impact on your damage potential.  This means you can suffer losses without any real impact for some time whereas many other lists will feel each lost unit and see the overall synergy potentially diminished more than the percentage of points spent on the unit would imply, especially true in armies like Eldar where each unit is a specialist.  Most armies lack that kind of strength to simply absorb and discount damage and be relatively unaffected by the loss of any particular units because many lists count upon expensive units or combos that are powerhouses used to break their foe's own expensive death stars and killer combos.

 

Essentially, these lists operate upon the premise that the answer to every threat is just drown it in bodies until it dies or runs out of time to matter.  With such a large number of units, the enemy shooting actually does become inefficient compared to how it operates against standard lists (unless the list is specifically built to counter your horde list).  Often times, a unit will have more firepower or such great assault capability that it is just wasted on an Infantry Squad or Heavy Weapons Squad when only half of those points would have been sufficient.  Think of it from a point value perspective; you need to devote several units to kill one of his, utilizing all of the points you spent whereas his unit could have been trimmed down 30% or more in cost and still managed to wipe out your unit he fired upon.  A great example is when melta/plasma Chosen are forced to shoot at a Special Weapons Squad or Infantry Squad for lack of a better target; they would have done the same or perhaps even more damage with plain bolters, and so wasted points on a special weapon that is too much.  See how this comparison makes your list, as an aggregate whole, tougher as your excessive number of units minimizes your overall losses while wasting the points your foe spent on his list, thereby reducing the damage he could have done had he tailored to your list?

 

In the case of my Krieg lists, the fragility of individual units is actually something I count upon thanks to the Forlorn Hope rule.  I want entire platoons to die the turn they arrive so I get them back on my next turn.  Since I actively seek out to kill my own men, it is not something most people are used to as the idea of losing units to get them back is fairly unique to Krieg.  This is another means of disrupting my foe's stride which plays to the strength of an attrition list. 

 

Even in regular Guard lists, if you can shake up standard conventions it can put your foe on the wrong foot.  A great example was a Combat Patrol tournament I recently played in where I brought a Grot list of 108 models.  I had more models in my list than all the other participants combined.  My first two foes were unsure of how to approach that kind of quantity disparity and made mistakes trying to figure it out (the third foe was an Ork player who in a typical example of Ork ingenuity just yelled WAAAGH! and ran at and then through me).  Such a tactic works in larger games just as well.  Sure better players may already be prepared for this, but unless someone routinely runs this kind of thing, most players will be caught off guard.  So do not count on messing with your foe's head, but do not fail to exploit it when you do.

 

In either list, I make extensive use of the artillery unit type and they are very durable so long as you keep them from being assaulted.  They are able to be ordered and have a very high toughness, which makes them large enough threats your foe will want to deal with them, but often cannot until late in the game thanks to the hordes of Guardsmen in front of them.  While there are plenty of ways to ignore cover, the majority of those cover ignoring attacks will only wound artillery on a 6+ and the large crew ablative wounds will keep the guns firing.  I also use Cyclops quite a bit as they are dirt cheap and often ignored.  Essentially they are T6 2W demo charges that blow up in assault at I10.  For their low cost and independent operation, you can take a few of them and sneak them through cover, using their small size to prevent line of sight being drawn to them. Many times people ignore them or forget about them until you assault them and detonate.  Even if your foe focuses on them then they will likely devote too much attention to them, sparing other units, and even if they die 30 points lost is nothing really.  The most often result is they are ignore until it is too late, then in that last turn before the surviving Cyclops charge, they devote far too much at them rather than accepting the blast and moving on, giving you the best of both.

 

About the assumption that there are too many cover ignoring weapons to count on cover as protection, I disagree.  Yes some people play on tables with far too little cover (seen tables with two small 3^rd edition starter ruins, a hill, and a small forest that were the "high density terrain" tables), and yes, in those cases most armies will have more than enough cover ignoring weapons to make it not relevant.  If, however, you first set up all the terrain to cover a full quarter of the table then disperse it across the table you will find that the number of cover ignoring weapons an average army actually brings to the table is simply not enough to ferret out all those Guardsmen trudging through terrain, drastically reducing shooting losses, which plays to the strength of number already brought to bear.  There are always those local metas where people have a paranoia about cover and focus on ensuring that it plays no role, but on average you should find that the recommended 25% terrain really makes an impact.  If you question the amount of terrain you use, actually completely cover a 2'x3' area with area terrain then see just what it looks like spread out across a 4'x6' table to get an idea of what the last few editions claimed was recommended cover.

 

I think I rambled on long enough for now.  Essentially what I am saying is look beyond unit to unit comparisons, especially in a vacuum, and think about how the entire army operates as a whole with no regard given to a single unit or combo thereof.  In internet advice threads like this, too often it boils down to advice given on a 'counter this unit with this' and 'apply that unit to that' rather than saying 'all of the units will work together like this against threats of that nature' (I need so much of this type to deal with threats that lean heavily this way but need to balance with enough to these to handle those kinds of lists). 

 

Also, Ulrick's sig really sums it up best:

 

Quantity has a quality all it's own...

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

I generally find that accuracy increases drastically when you use more ordinance...

[Chefzilla]

I keep my Veterans in Chimeras, my Tempestus in Vendettas and field tanks. I'll keep my regular squishies in the back as bubble wrap for my arty weapons. Priests give a unit Zealot. For me it's all about combined arms. Infantry support tanks and arty and vice versa.

[FashaTheDog]

I generally find that accuracy increases drastically when you use more ordinance...

Indeed, the larger the smoking crater, the more thoroughly the problem has been solved.

[Ulrik_Ironfist]

 

I generally find that accuracy increases drastically when you use more ordinance...

Indeed, the larger the smoking crater, the more thoroughly the problem has been solved.

 

As my favorite Action Figure therapy character always says: Problem solved, problem staying solved, Rangers Lead The Way! (Alas, I never went to ranger school, so I can only try to be one in my heart, and live the code, even if I can't actually ever be one...)

[Quicksilver117]

Fasha, that was an outstanding strategy explanation. Definitely agree that units cannot be studied in a vacuum, and please, I am an avid reader so don't worry about rambling if you are responding to any of my inane questions. To Chefzilla, that is probably the one actual tactic I remember to use in every game. The concept of using the orders appeals to my inner Tactician(CREEEEEEEEEEED!!) and I am always trying to build my list to use them effectively, in a duals game I put yarrick in a grey knights death star so we could ignors cover the psycannons. In fact, I severely wish we had another independent character with orders access and I end up using Yarrick a lot (Since he is the great savior of mankind and future avatar of the Ork Gods this is accepta<-BLAM heresy!)  to try and get front line orders use. I don't currently have the 3000 infantry models for the full foot guard though. And I grew up on an airport so I love flyers and right now am working my way towards a little more balanced approach (which probably means I'm going to continue to get pasted) though I think I am going to definitely put together a MOAR mans list and test out this option the next time I can play (which is probably vassal, I am many moons from my next actual table). To Chef, Mounted up like that actually sounds like how I want to do things, have you used Elysians to see which is more effective in this regard? I actually have a number of scions so I would not mind using them if they can be cost efficient, but elysian veterans(and especially D-99) seem like they fill a similar role with MOAR mans.