Beating Character Spam

[Frater Cornelius]

If you are not a fan of cheese and exploit, oh boy are you in for a fun ride. This is what I played against:

 

7x Autarch - Melta, Jetbike, that utterly stupid Lance with a 6/-4/2 shooting and melee profile

 

1 Farseer on Jetbike (Fortune, Doom)

1 Warlock on Jetbike (Conceal)

 

Ynncarn

 

2x 6 Shadow Spectres

 

The Shadow Spectres give units -1 hit when they are being shot. The characters are behind, meaning you need to kill them to shoot the chars, which triggers Soulburst. Killing characters triggers Soulburst. Add to that utterly ridiculous speed, very powerful melee and ranged options while offering a highly limited targets to shoot and you have a list that borders on exploit.

My thought would be to rule that characters can not cover characters... but right now this is legal.

 

So, how to beat that with UM? They all fly and Melta your tanks and charge you and Soulburst. Frankly, I have no idea.

[Captain Idaho]

Have you thought of using a mallet or lump hammer to crush his models :d

 

Hmm. That's tough. How about 2-3 Culexus assassins? They are quite survivable even if he's shooting with Soul Burst.

[Imren]

Fight cheese with cheese (assuming you're playing open play):

 

Drop a unit of gal vorbak or red butchers in front of each of the spectres and delete them, then your two or three sicarans finish off the jetbikes (can't jink) and the problem solved.

 

Thank the emperor for the forgeworld toolbox to solve 40k cheese-problems.

[TheMelancholic]

Seriously, don't play against him.

 

Nobody else will want to play him after 1-2 games either and he'll be left with a bunch of models collecting dust. It sounds harsh, sure, but when I play 40k outside of an ultra competitive setting I'm doing it for mutual enjoyment with my opponent. Sure I want to win, but it also needs to be a challenge for it to feel fun. If he's running a cheese list like that I'd imagine he's not really having that much fun either.

 

Hopefully after a few weeks of people refusing to play with him he changes his act and plays with something more fun for everyone.

[shandwen]

Vindicators. Nuke a small section of the table all at least once.

[Frater Cornelius]

@ Captain Idaho - The issue with that is that his Autarchs have a 16" move with Fly, which he can use with Soulburst. A couple Culexi are hardly going to be an issue to outmaneuver.

To make it clear though, the character rule may be bullfeces, but this isn't what breaks the list. It is Soulburst and how it is basically unavoidable because you need to kill a character to shoot the next one.

Double actions grant him an insane reach if he moves and potentially double melee and double dakka anywhere he wants. If I played that Guilliman plus Assassins list that consisted only of characters, then Culexi are gold. In an UM list they would be rather easily avoided.

[TheMelancholic]

@ Captain Idaho - The issue with that is that his Autarchs have a 16" move with Fly, which he can use with Soulburst. A couple Culexi are hardly going to be an issue to outmaneuver.

To make it clear though, the character rule may be bullfeces, but this isn't what breaks the list. It is Soulburst and how it is basically unavoidable because you need to kill a character to shoot the next one.

Double actions grant him an insane reach if he moves and potentially double melee and double dakka anywhere he wants. If I played that Guilliman plus Assassins list that consisted only of characters, then Culexi are gold. In an UM list they would be rather easily avoided.

 

If you are set on fighting him, here's what I'd do.

 

Take scouts. Loads and loads and loads of scouts. I'm being dead serious here.

 

If your playing an objectives game, big units of scouts are the way to go. His shooting is high quality, high power, with high penetration. Give him nothing but scouts to shoot at. Laugh as his Exarchs kill six scouts a turn. Shadow spectres are more of an issue here and I know their Prism Rifles can be nasty, as can their ld debuff aura. So run scouts. Big blobs of scouts, making him work for that Strength through Death. Park them in cover, on an objective with another big scout blob (or two) and just flood the board with your guys.

 

When it comes to your shooting, try to cripple his units as much as possible without killing them. Focus on the Spectres first, try to whittle them down to one or two elves and ignore them for the rest of the battle. Biker Autarchs are not very menacing at all against your scouts. Sure their shooting hurts, but its wasted against cheapo infantry which are far more points efficient than the HQ choice that's got nothing better to shoot but them.

 

Spread out as much as possible. This is doable with scouts because of their concealed deployment trickery, but generally you want to split his force as much as possible. Strength through Death only works if he's within 7" of a destroyed unit. Spreading out means that he too has to split his forces. Split forces mean less targets for his buffs, limiting his options further. You don't care as much about split forces. Scouts are scouts, they do their own thing without much help.

 

Play the objective. He's running a much smaller force than you, so use that to your advantage. He has to work far far harder to score objectives than you do. Capitalise on this fact, and swamp objectives with cheap bodies. You have defenders of humanity. He doesn't. If even one scout is alive on an objective by the end of the game, even if he's surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned as all get out you will score that objective and he will not.

 

He wants to charge? Fall back and cluster mine his ass before shooting him with your UM tactics.

 

He wants to hang back and shoot? He can't really do that because his guns are so short ranged.

 

He wants to play the objective? Good luck with that, because you should have a way easier time than him at that.

 

Basically ignore what he's trying to do and focus on what he's trying to ignore. The objectives, the things that actually win you the game.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Edit: Also consider taking lots of heavy bolters on your scout units. Combos well with hellfire shells which is a nice cheap stratagem to be spending your CP on since you should have a bunch to spare. Also nice to shoot normally.

Edited August 27, 2017 by TheMelancholic

[Brother Tual]

GC08 just jizzed in his pants

[TheMelancholic]

GC08 just jizzed in his pants

GC08?

 

I'm new here...forgive me if I don't know all the 1337 lingos.

[Frater Cornelius]

@ TheMelancholic - The issue with that is that this list is pretty specialised. If I am going to face a list like that in a tournament, I won't have a forged list against one match-up, that isn't even that common as of yet.

 

But I feel you underestimate the killing power of an Autarch against Scouts. Between shooting and charging he can kill around 6 on average per Autarch. He can use 2 to kill 10 Scouts and then Soulburst to move one of the Autarch very far in some other direction. Give it 3 turns and he will have crippled me.

 

But maybe I also overestimate this list, having played only once against it, not knowing what to expect.

 

Edit: No need to learn leet speak, it is banned on here, anyway. GC08 (full name is greatcrusade08) is a fellow board member, who is big on Scouts :P

Edited August 27, 2017 by Frater Cornelius

[Lysere]

Line breaker bombardments can do wonders against this type of stuff, also use some hard hitting characters with Only in Death to get your attacks off anyway. That combined with banners means even as he kills stuff you still get to tear into him and if he gets too spread out soulburst isn't as useful.

[Frater Cornelius]

Linebreaker is not realistic in a tournament list. People are ready for mech, killing one Vindicator is not hard. The others become fairly useless after.