Completely lost dealing with deathwing.

[warischoy]

So today i played against a belial deathwing list all deepstriking with bikes for beacon. gamemode was the scouring and vector strike deployment.

list includes roughly:

belial lightning claws

5 thunderhammer stormshield terminators
5 thunderhammer stormshield terminators
5 terminators (4 thunderhammer stormshield, 1 havoc launcher)
5 terminators (4 thunderhammer stormshield, 1 havoc launcher)

1 attack bike (multi melta, TL stormbolter)
1 attack bike (multi melta, TL stormbolter)
3 ravenwing bikers (TL stormbolter, flamer)
3 ravenwing bikers (TL stormbolter, flamer)

problem is that all those terminators are all extremly hard to budge and are completely invinsible. There is nothing that i can see that tyranids can do to kill stormshield thunderhammer terminators.

rending doesn't work (3++ save then all those genestealer die)
monsterous creatures (crushingclaws tevigon with iron arm, hive tyrants) doesn't work again (3++ save then no and get beaten to death by hammers)

Only thing that remotely works is psychic powers from zoanthropes like psychic shrek but that got denied the witched and also they also don't deny the 3++ save those stormshields give.

All in all i have no choice but to concede on about turn 2 because basically my entire army was neutered and there is nothing i could do about it.

this is the first time i have played against so many Stormshield terminators and i actually find it much harder to play against than draigowing for example.

So please show me a bit of wisdom on how you have previously dealt with such a list.

[scootare]

3 Mawlocs for template based high AP (They will get charged and die next turn likely...)
Doom in spore for high AP
2 sets of three Zoanthropes in spore Warp Lancing

Flying TyrantsX2 he will have a hard time shooting as he has no air or anti air.

Make him make his stormshield saves, doubles the chance of a wound.

IDK that is what I would do....if you had the models for it.

[warischoy]

i don't have the models for it. but the thing is we would be trading 160-180 point units or models to kill a single 40 point model and die next turn.

especially when the things like using alot of zoanthropes and mawlocs and expensive and also fragile. Also if i use these models the list would be worst against other armies.

in general though the maths are not on our side however, as 12 TL shots from the hive tyrant only results in 1 dead terminator. 3 zoanthropes warp lancing results in roughly 0.5 dead terminators.
assuming the mawloc hits all 5 of the terminators it would result in 1 dead terminator.

those mawlocs, zoanthropes which cost about 3 times the dead terminator gets killed and half our army is dead.

[N.I.B.]

I tabled a list like that in 5th, a Thunderbubble variant. By turn 2 I had killed 15 TH/SS Terminators. I'm not sure what differs, do those Terminators have FNP? Otherwise drown them in armour saves and the 1's will show up.

[apaosa]

N.I.B nailed it. Torrent of fire will do the job for you.

[gloomfang]

Refusal to fight. Not in the take your army and go home, but engage and tarpit his units or evade them. Target priority will help too.

T1) Kill the bike(s) with the becon. Everything you have at them that can shoot.
T2) Send tarpit units to engage the units with the launchers. Send everything else to kill his bikes.
T3) Renforce your tarpit units. Send all your elite killers into 1 unit of unengaged temis that are on an objective. Things with boneswords or rending are best, but make sure you have a lot of attacks. 2-3 units to his 1. Anything that can shoot, but is not engaged shoots at the bikes if they can or the unengaged termis if the can't.
T4) Don't send more tarpits. Move tarpit units not engaged to objectives. Send Elite units to kill next unit if done with the first (and they should be).
T5) Control objectives. Shoot at smallest unit of termiators in range. Elites should be moving and killing what they can.

Name of the game is numbers. List could look like:
2 tervigons: Roll on Telepathy at least 1 time for Shriek. Rest on Biomancy. Catalyst is not good against this list.
2 units of 4 warriors with primes (BS with no whip) and Deathspitters. Toxin is good. AG too if you have points.
2 units of 20 Termigaunts. No upgrades.
DoM as his power gets around the armor.
2 units of 2 biovores. S4 vs T4 and it might pin. Should be able to hit most of the unit.

Shrikes with BS, Trigons, Mawlocks and anything else to taste.

[maeloke]

This terminator army is absurdly all-in on a very small number of units with a very small number of attacks apiece. Your solution is, therefore...

Rippers!

No seriously. Burrowing rippers are 12 points per base, which means you can afford three bases for every . single . terminator. That's nine wounds to their one, and they'll be lucky to average one wound apiece per turn. The army doesn't have enough templates to deal with them.

So yeah. Tarpit two or three units with 8x burrowing rippers (96 points, oh no!) and focus on the rest with bonesword+ts warriors or shrikes. 5 assaulting should average 16 hits, 12 wounds, 4 failed invuln saves = only 1 terminator to strike back.

This army you're facing is sorely lacking in ranged answers to a lot of our threats - MCs? T4? Gaunt/gant spam? So take advantage of it. You should be able to outnumber his wounds 3 or 4 to 1.

[warischoy]

I see. I was contemplating spawning some gaunts to tarpit the unit but don't want to risk rolling a double on the first turn. Next time i should try to tarpit units instead of trying to kill them outright.

N.I.B: No he they don't have feel no pain, but i was unable to make him roll any 1s. hive guard didn't work, tervigon didn't work, genestealers died, devilgants didn't do much (15 gants killing 1 terminator). Bear in mind that i was playing 1750. but how in the world were you able to do that? please do tell, unless it was amazingly bad luck on your opponent's part i struggle to find a way to reliably do that (at least on the maths anyway.

[roxor08]

Like the other said, use those Devilgants to your favor, if you can get them to enter reliably by turn 2, with a Tyrant + HC, and have a Tervigon nearby, just shoot them down and provide buffs to your gants like Counterattack, against those slow Termies you'll be able to whittle down AT LEAST a squad a turn if you concentrate everything you have at it!

[wolvesoffenris]

I would try a couple things.
1. Swarmlord, 1 Tyrant Guard, 1 Prime w/ BSLW and Regen
Swarmlord swaps powers for biomancy hopefully pulling iron arm and enfeeble
This gives you a multi weapon skill unit with no majority so it will be WS9
A multi toughness unit if SL casts iron arm with no majority so it will be the new SL toughness of 7-9
Cast enfeeble from either a tervigon or the SL on the unit then assault. He will hit and wound on 5's against a boosted SL unit and you get a 4+ save. If you can get endurance on the unit all the better.
The SL makes him reroll his 3++ saves so you should do some significant damage to any unit you assault.

2. Cast enfeeble on one of his units and assault with Hormagaunts with TS/AG or Furious Charge from the Swarmlord.
You will hit on 4's re-rolling 1's and wound on 3's rerolling everything. Just drown him in wounds and he won't really be able to kill that many back.
If only 15 Hormagaunts make it in they will kill almost 4 terminators on average like this.
The second round of combat you will kill the remaining 1-2 and be free on your next turn.

[Akrim]

Sounds like you just had a bad game - dice cant always be on your side. But that said, just swamp the buggers. For the cost of one of his Termie squads you could have 27 Hormagaunts with Adrenal Glands - doing 81 attacks on the charge.

Also as mentioned, check out some of the Psyker powers - Telepathy and Biomancy are both particualrly potent even at teh Primaris level.

[paxmiles]

Jul 17, 2012 17:14:15 GMT maeloke said:

This terminator army is absurdly all-in on a very small number of units with a very small number of attacks apiece. Your solution is, therefore...

Rippers!

No seriously. Burrowing rippers are 12 points per base, which means you can afford three bases for every . single . terminator. That's nine wounds to their one, and they'll be lucky to average one wound apiece per turn. The army doesn't have enough templates to deal with them.

So yeah. Tarpit two or three units with 8x burrowing rippers (96 points, oh no!) and focus on the rest with bonesword+ts warriors or shrikes. 5 assaulting should average 16 hits, 12 wounds, 4 failed invuln saves = only 1 terminator to strike back.

This army you're facing is sorely lacking in ranged answers to a lot of our threats - MCs? T4? Gaunt/gant spam? So take advantage of it. You should be able to outnumber his wounds 3 or 4 to 1.

It's 3 wounds to their 1. Every attack from the terminators listed above should have S8. Still, not a bad plan.

With terminators, answer is volume of attacks/shots, unless you can deny their AV2. A 2+ save requires 6 shots to kill. A 3+ inv save is still killing a terminator for every 3 shots. Thus, denial of armor is good, even if it only seems to reduce him by a little bit. Blast weapons are very useful against terminators, especially large blasts. Templates are nice too (pyrovores or strangle webs, though our options are kinda lacking).
-Pax

[scootare]

5 units of 15 devilgaunts in spores with 2 flying hive tyrants with old adversary and hive commander would ruin his day.

Deploy the tyrants in the table and turtle turn one...Turn two move so that you can make 4 units reroll misses...you should get 3-4 units in on turn 2 and be able to fly your tyrants right over to where you want them. 24 shots from the tyrants at S6 rerolled and 270 shots from the gaunts. That list would die to other types of list because its spammy but would be a nightmare for this particular list. (No flyers, No Heavy Tanks to deal with everything vulnerable to S4 and S6...)

[greatescape13]

Seconding others here, but gaunts with devourers to the rescue, man.

Bait, switch, pummel with fire. Have (please do not swear) units to tie up the termies to enable more rounds of shooting.

Try Ripper Swarms with Spinefists as well. They're great to line up in front of a large devilgaunt unit. Heaps of re-rollable shots means they do well even on Overwatch. And then they get appropriately pulped due to Thunderhammerage from the termies. Just in time for them to get shot again by the devilgaunts.

Cheers.

[warischoy]

cheers for the replies. i guess its time to buy more models.

is it just me or has devilgants gotten a bit buffed lately? Somehow i am tempted to actually outflank or start them on the table.