Anti-Titans: Eldar Revenant Titan

The Eldar Revenant Titan isn’t actually that hard to kill on it’s own. For 800 points, it is actually pretty fragile. However, it has three things that make it really hard to kill:

First, the guns. Four destroyer shots with 60″ range. And while that is not the highest range, it is enough to cause massive damage to most enemies.

Secondly, the holo-fields. A 4+ invulnerable save, whether hit with a S6 weapon or a SD weapon.

Lastly, the mobility. This thing is nearly impossible to get in combat, because of it’s mobility. If it want’s to, it can move 36″ in the movement phase, with no penalties that may cause it damage.

So what do we do about it? The destroyer weapons are too powerful to ignore, and it is difficult to lock it in combat, so I say shoot it. Blow it to pieces. Deffkoptas, once again, work great against rear armor. Five deffkoptas will destroy 1 structure point in the shooting phase, and half of the time the deffkoptas will also destroy a weapon, or cause a drive damaged result. It is best to use 2 deffkopta units, though, each a certain distance apart, so your enemy will have a harder time hitting rear armor. Also, any S8+ weapons nearby will help. However, don’t ignore the rest of the army. If the revenant titan is not much of a threat, (If both weapons have been destroyed, maybe,) focus your firepower elsewhere. No need to waste bullets.

Eldar: strengths and weaknesses

So, today I am going to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of Eldar, from my experience.

The Eldar can be a very effective army, if played well. One of their guns (nightspinner, I believe,) can pin an enemy unit, and then cause even more damage in the next turn. (First, it causes damage, and then the next time that unit moves, it is going through difficult and dangerous terrain.) They have a high number of barrage weapons, great firepower, and still have some units that are good in close combat. (Avatar, anyone?) However, they do have a couple of weaknesses which are easy to exploit:

First off, they tend to lack high strength/armor piercing weapons. Like all armies they can take some, but they cannot take a lot. That means well armored units, such as Nobz or Meganobz, are very difficult to kill, because small arms fire is rarely effective against them, due to good armor and large amounts of wounds. And it also means that tanks with good armor, such as Battlewagons, (Or, in other armies, land raiders, monoliths, and other super-tanks,) will be difficult to kill. Rear armor will help, but the tanks will have several turns more than an army such as Dark Eldar with a dozen brightlances. (On a side-note, every time I have used Nobz, Meganobz, or both against Eldar, I have won spectacularly.)

Nearly all of their units have either/both WS4 or BS4, so they are pretty elite in what they do, but they only have S3 T3, so they are not exactly marines. (Armor isn’t great most of the time either.) Anti-infantry weapons work very well against the. (Big shootas wound on 2’s and penetrate, bigbomms wound on 3’s and penetrate, even grot blastas wound on 4’s, so one unit of grots will kill 6-7 of them in a single shooting phase.)

The elite units that they have are either expensive or low in numbers. Not unlike most other elite units, but in this case they also have bad armor most of the time. There are exceptions, but for the most part a gun will kill the elites just as easily as the troops. So, killing them first, before they can cause much damage, is always smart.

One of my friends, (Hey, Patrick!) Always takes the Avatar, so I am going to put a word on him here:

The hardest part about killing the Avatar is that ork boyz hit on 5’s and wound on 6’s. And, not many weapons are good against him because they either don’t wound easily, don’t penetrate, or have a low number of shots. The one unit I have found effective is one you have heard of from me many times before. It isn’t deffkoptas, it isn’t ork hordes, and it certainly isn’t Mad Dok Grotsnik. I even mentioned them earlier in this very post! It is decked out Nobz. With a Waaagh! banner, they hit on 4’s instead of 5’s. With big choppas, they wound on 3’s or 4’s, depending on the charge. (Even regular choppas can wound on 5’s, if they charge.) With power fists, they wound on 2’s and remove the armor save, (so it is a 4+ invuln instead of 3+ armor.) And they are still effective against other units. Also, this unit is really really fun to play. And, since the Avatar is only S6, he doesn’t cause instant death, so he will have to cause 10 wounds to remove a model, if you assorted your wargear well enough.

Apocalypse: Killing Titans

One of the most challenging parts about Apocalypse games is managing to take enough firepower to take down Titans. Titans are so powerful that they always take a lot of firepower, but there is one trend I have noticed:

So, you are getting ready to play Apocalypse, and your opponent decides to take a Titan. Now, you decide to take a Titan, and maybe a couple of tanks, just so you can kill his titan before it causes much damage. He sees that, and in order to kill your titan and tanks, he takes another titan and even more tanks. Now, you need to stop that, and so you have to take even more tanks and Titans and Super heavy vehicles. What I am saying is that in Apocalypse, tanks, (Not just super heavies, but also a lot of them,) are far more prevalent than troops or HQ or anything like that. So, you need to take enough weapons to kill all of them. Here is a 2-step process for killing titans:

First off, take a lot of S6-8 weapons. Not something really expensive or valuable, just make sure that they have a lot of shots, and they are S6 or higher. This is for taking down the Void fields. Any glancing or penetrating hit will make them collapse, so you just need to have a total of 12. Take enough of these to collapse 3-4 Void fields a turn, and shoot the power fields down.

Then, take a lot of anti tank weapons. I am talking round after round of S8+ weapons, and as many SD weapons, as you can. Anything AP1 is also valuable. Pretty much like you were killing 3-4 tanks at once. Because, thanks to structure points, you pretty much are. Simply tear down the Void fields, then hit as hard as you can. Once again, Deffkoptas on rear armor, Supa-rokkits, maybe even using a lifta-droppa to ram a regular tank into the super-heavy. Something that causes automatic glancing hits is fine too. Just anything that hits hard.

This works pretty well against most super-heavies. However, if you are facing something like a Warlord Battle Titan, you will need something more. A Stompa can cause massive damage, if you can lock the Warlord in CC. 5 SD attacks on the charge, hitting on 3’s. That is a little over 3 penetrating hits with a +1 on the damage roll. That will get rid of 2 structure points, and possibly a Primary weapon or a Drive Damaged result. Of course, you will take 1 penetrating hit, and take damage, but it is a 600 point walker attacking a 2500 point walker. The only problem is getting the Stompa to the Warlord. Flank March is very effective for this.

Ork Transport Tactics

It was pointed out in a comment that it should be ‘Carnifices’ not ‘Carnifaxes,’ but I think that will be okay. I am still going to do written posts, but this format will also show up sometimes.

Stompa Tactics

So, I decided that since I built a stompa, I should do a strategy on it!

The stompa is deadly, and relatively cheap. (Cheap for titans, that is.) The only disadvantage is AV 13, but if you throw in a Big Mek with a KFF and 3 grot oilers, you can repair it’s weapons, and the 4+ cover save on a 12″ model can come in handy. The way I see it, there are four things that is good at:

Anti-infantry. I mean ANY infantry. Whether it is a unit of Terminators or a unit of Grotz, the stompa’s main gun can kill it all. It can even kill HQ’s with ease, because with S10, it causes instant death against most units.

Anti-Vehicles. I am not referring to walkers. The chainsaw arm is SD, so it penetrates armor automatically and you get a +1 on the damage table, and with it the stompa has 4 attacks. So unless the vehicle moved at it’s maximum speed, (and even occasionally if it does,) your chainsaw will rend through vehicles and tear them to pieces. Even super-heavy vehicles will take huge amounts of damage. and if you happen to be facing a warlord battle titan, which will almost never have a titan close combat weapon, you will all hit at the same time, your stompa has one extra attacks, and the battle titan only has S10, instead of SD.

Anti-Air. Death to the air-based vehicles! now it is only good at AA once per game. When you fire your supa-gatla. You see, your BS is doubled because it is a pintle-mounted weapon. (well not actually doubled, but it will not be reduced to 1. All other weapons hit on a 6, and only on a 6. The supa-gatla hits on a 5.) and while it is only S7, that is still easily high enough to penetrate most Aerial Vehicles. (they usually have relatively low armor.)

Bullet absorber/terror aspect. The whole thought of bringing a 12″-14″ model will fill your opponents with shock and awe. Baneblades and other tanks are big, but they are also short and will not impose the same awesomeness as a stompa or a battle titan. Your opponents will either run in terror, or focus their firepower on it. If they run in terror, you should be fine. and if they focus their firepower, your Big Mek KFF will stop half of it, and with 3 grot oilers, you should have no trouble repairing it’s primary weapons.

1000 Pt. WAAAGH! list

This is one of the more ‘fluffy’ army lists I have designed, but I think it would be really fun to play.

Warboss w/ Power Klaw-85 points

30 Ork Boyz w/ 2 big shootas, nob w/ Power Klaw, bosspole-230

30 Ork Boyz w/ 2 big shootas, nob w/ Power Klaw, bosspole-230

30 Ork Boyz w/ 2 big shootas, nob w/ Power Klaw, bosspole-230

30 Ork Boyz w/ 1 big shoota, nob w/ Power Klaw, bosspole-225

Now, that may not be the most competitive list, but I cannot wait to see the look on my opponents faces when I turn up to a 1000 point game with more than 120 models.

Warhammer 40K: The Psychological Aspect

Note: Before you start reading, I want you to understand a couple of things. First off, these tactics are not intended for friendly games. That is because friendly games are not all about annihilating your opponent. These are only for serious tournament players. Secondly, this is not foolproof. It will not work as well against some players in comparison to others. (More precisely, players who act instinctively will be more effected, players who follow a detailed plan/think their moves out very well, will not be as influenced.) Lastly, this is not the easiest strategy to use. It will take a little time before you can master it. With that in mind…

A lot of players in Warhammer 40k ignore the psychological aspect of the game. However, the ability to ‘psych out’ your opponent can be very helpful. If you make him think that he cannot win, he won’t try as hard. This works on both single combat scales, as well as the entire game in general. This has been done in real wars, as well as occasionally in nature. For instance, if you make your army look HUGE then your opponent will get nervous easily. Now, with orks a large army will be expected, but make it look even bigger by spreading out your boyz. This is smart anyways, to help keep blast templates from hurting you as much. However, if you spread out your boyz the maximum distance, then your unit will look 3 times as large. In the same aspect, your entire army will appear 3 times as large. This can also be used to make a powerful unit look weaker, if you keep them packed tight so they look smaller. If your enemy thinks that your horde of boyz is so massive that killing them is futile, he will not try as hard to shoot them, and will never even think about assaulting them. So, make your hordes look huge, and they will flee.

Another idea is to bring up games that you got lucky playing in the past. For instance, once my warboss killed 4 space marines on his own in CC. He had a power klaw, but still. Or if I was playing against nidz, I could bring up the time I nearly annihilated a unit of 3 tyranid warriors with 4 meganobz, in the shooting phase! If you bring up things like that, they will avoid the mentioned units like plague. Even better, if you could bring up one of the more ‘random’ units in the ork army, they will be even more fearful, because it might not be just luck. You could bring up the time your SAG destroyed an entire unit of terminators when you rolled double 6’s. If your opponent thinks that a unit is more powerful than it is, he will either avoid it, or attack it with way more force than necessary, wasting some of their firepower.

One last idea, you could have different dice for different tests. For instance, you have two dice that you always use for leadership tests, and you always use the same dice for armor saves, and you use a different set of dice for hits/wounds. That may not actually do anything, but your opponent will remember your exceptional rolls. Lets say that you keep rolling average for the first 3 turns, then your ‘attack dice’ get 15 hits and only 1 miss. Your opponent might attribute it to the dice, and he will then think that your dice are actually doing something. And then, when your ‘armor’ dice get 4 of the 5 cover saves, he will be sure of that. It might not be true, but it works sometimes.

And, on a different note, I have been working on the ‘Ultimate Painting Challenge.’ For those of you who don’t remember, the ‘Ultimate Painting Challenge‘ means that I have to paint my entire army, (or at least, what it was when I started the ‘Ultimate Painting Challenge‘) by this date:

10/15/10

If I do not paint all of the models for the ‘Ultimate Painting Challenge‘ by that date, then I will give away one item from my store, to one of my readers, for FREE! yes, for FREE! you heard me right, I said for FREE! even the shipping is FREE! and the handling is FREE! that means that the item, the shipping (within the continental United States,) and the handling will be FREE! I need to stop typing FREE!

Here is what is finished:

41 boyz

Warboss w/PK attack squig

4 deffkoptas

4 nobz

And here is what is not finished:

19 ork boys

10 grots

1 slaver

1 trukk

1 battlewagon (for an added challenge, it is not fully assembled

8 deffkoptas

10 lootas (one fell apart)

6 meganobs

3 burnas

1 mek

8 nobz

1 painboy

1 big mek with SAG

1 megaboss

1 wierdboy

Ghazkull Thraka

Mad Dok Grotsnik

So, I better get painting.

Apocalypse Strategy: Tyranids, Tau, and Space Marines

Today I will do three short strategies on fighting apocalypse battles with three different armies:

Tyranids: These guys first. They will usually be taking giant swarms of gaunts, (probably using the ‘endless swarm’ configuration, to gain the special rules.) The other thing they will be taking is super-monsters. No panzy warriors for them. They will go straight for the source, taking heirophants and heirodules, (if they own them,) and if that fails, all manner of regular MC’s. So pretty much you need two things: anti troop weapons and anti-super weapons. You know what you need? Stompas. Lots of stompas. Normally I would suggest big mek stompas for guns, but they have no tanks so your lifta-droppa would be useless. now, you could just take it for the gaze of mork and the gigashoot replacement weapon, but I personally would rather just keep the chainsaw arm, so you can kill 3-4 carnifaxes at once if you needed to. (Muah-hah-hah!) Another nifty trick, if you are near the board edge, you can assault a unit of 30 gaunts with a stompa and, well, ‘stomp’ on them using the stomp special attack. Then, when they get the -15 or so leadership, they will run off the board edge, or at least run a long ways away. However, this works both ways. While you should take lots of ork boyz to hold the many many objectives, and kill all the gaunts, but you should avoid the gargantuan creatures, as they can stomp too. Unfortunately, they move 12″ instead of 6″, so one thing to try is taking a bunch of stompas and and equal number of ork hordes, and putting all the hordes in the stompas. However, you will have trouble killing heirophants because they have T9 and 10 wounds. So what do you do? you can’t assault with initiative one, that is for sure. but you also shouldn’t assault with low strength, either. The nice thing about heirophants is that you can only take two, maybe three, in even a HUGE battle, but you can take four or five stompas. Now, the heirodule, while you can take several more, also has lower toughness, and only 6 wounds. not only that, but he only has a 3+ save, surprisingly. So what do you do against all of these threats?

First off, if your enemy agrees to using the ‘custom stompa’ rules that I posted about a while ago, take a ‘missile platform’ because 3D6 S9 shots the penetrate heirodule armor, plus D3 supa-rokkits, will kill most any threat, though it can only get one per turn. Let’s see, you would get an average of 3 wounds per turn, per stompa. so, with one stompa you could kill a heirodule every other turn. Also consider taking the gaze of mork if you use this special set of rules. Also, if he has several MC’s clumped together, take advantage of that with your 7″ blast S10 AP1 weapon. Awesome. Now, heirophants will require a little more work. There will only be a couple of them, but you will still have to shoot them a TON to kill them. focus ALL of your AP2 weaponry on one at a time until it is dead. Except maybe the stompa’s main gun, because you may want to shoot a gaunt unit that is getting to close to an objective. But otherwise, focus as much firepower as you can on them, and assuming you have gaze of mork and three stompas, (three stompas shouldn’t be a problem if they are taking two heirophants, because that must be a huge game,) it will still take you eight turns of concentrated fire to kill both. That is around four turns per heirophant, on average. (and use your missile platforms to kill everyone else, like the heirodules and the other MC’s.) Now, that is assuming your life is average, it make take less if you are lucky, or more if you are not, but on average it will take you about 8 turns to kill 2 heirophants with 3 stompas, assuming nobody gets in combat. so once the biggest nasties are out of the way, you have very little to fear from you enemy. I suggest that after you play that, you just mop up everyone else, very few of whom can take down stompas and the like. So: Focus all of your firepower on the most dangerous enemies first, keeping your ork boyz hidden inside the stompas, then simply release the boyz, hold the objectives, and use the stompas to mop up the rest of the gaunts and weaker MC’s.

Tau: These guys I find a lot easier. They have no super-heavy vehicles, one flyer, and only a couple formations. They pretty much have no new tricks. Simply unload with stompas,  because your Deth Kannon matches range with their railgun. Also, I suggest you take big mek stompas on this one, because that way you can use your lifta droppa on close tanks, and you get the power fields if they shoot with their railgun before you get the chance to blow them up. Now, the Deth Kannon, while it could blow them up, won’t do as good unless you move close enough to also use your lifta droppa and your gaze of mork. But all of those combined, as well as a few units of deffkoptas, and you should have no problem taking out the threats in just a few turns, especially if he only mounts his railguns onto broadside suits. And since he will try to avoid your guns, simply send out hordes of boyz to get the objectives and use your stompas as a reverse-lighting rod, keeping them hidden from your awesome power.If they can’t show them self without dying, but they also can’t win without seizing objectives, there is very little they can do. And yes, they will have more guys then a normal battle, but once the tanks are gone there is very little threat from their troops, so you should have no problem finishing them, unless you get terrible luck.

Space Marines: These guys, while they pose a larger threat then tau, are also not overly dangerous. Because while they got some new formations, and the thunderhawk, their main force is still not overly threatening. Once again, take big mek stompas to prevent them dying from shooting, (power fields will help a little,) and take a lot of them. However, if they take a battle titan, or even a mini-titan, you will have issues. The smaller titans, the scout walkers, you can just use a large amount of deffkoptas, and maybe a battlewagon with a deff rolla. And for the warlord battle titan? Well, you can’t shoot at him. you will have trouble even taking down the power fields in a turn, and it will repair all of them in a single turn. What do I suggest? Ghazkull Thraka inside of Snikrot’s kommandos. Snikrot allows anyone in his unit to come in from any board edge. That includes independent characters who join the unit. But, if he stays near the middle, you will have trouble. However, your best shot is getting Ghazkull into close combat alone, so take as many kommandos as you can, to make a retinue to protect him from shooting. The ‘slow and purposeful’ will really hurt here, but try and stay in cover because that will no longer effect you any worse than it already is. Then, when you are within 11-12″ call your WAAAGH!, break ghazkull off from the unit and get into assault range with the waaagh!, get into combat, and kill him. Now, I know what you are thinking, how can ghazkull kill the titan? Well, he is immune to instant death, on the turn you charged in he has an invulnerable 2+ save, and the battle titan can only stomp on him. And, one he is ‘stunned,’ (which should only take one turn,) he can only stomp on you. Not only that, but he cannot shoot, and he can’t do anything to harm you. Also, if you get ghazkull to the rear, you will cause a little more damage. So, given a few turns, ghazkull should be able to kill the beast. every turn you should get .5 glancing hits and 1.4 penetrating hits, so causing a ‘stunned’ result should not be difficult. In addition, within 15 turns or so, the monster should be dead. yeah, now that I think about it, 15 turns will be to many. By that time, though ghazkull may still be fine, the enemy will have assaulted him and probably killed him with a different unit. So, what you need to do is also take 3-4 battlewagons, all armed with deff rollas, grot riggas, ‘ard case, and armor plates. Also, if you have 100 extra point, throw a big mek with an Kustom Force Field in, to keep them safe. Charge them all against the Battle Titan, and with around 28 hits on average per turn, you should have no problem getting the titan to die. That will cause 4.5 glancing hits and 9.3 penetrating hits, causing an average of 4 structure points lost, plus weapons damage and stuff. So, maybe I should have re-labled this ‘how to kill a Battle Titan without really trying.’ What do you do if he takes two battle titans? you run and cry in a corner. (or you take around ten more deff rolla battlewagons and another KFF mek or two. Anyhow, once you have the Titans dead, (or titan, if he takes a warlord in a non-huge battle,) simply use a few stompas to mop up the mess, because space marines one advantage, (High armor,) is not as advantageous during apocalypse. (Also, orks got a real boost in apocalypse.)

FYI about orks:

A few interesting facts about orks:

They have the longest range melta weapon in the game. (Zzap from the wierdboy)

They have the closest thing to a ‘vortex grenade’ outside of apocalypse battles. (the Shokk Attack Gun on double 6’s)

They have the cheapest troops choice (or for that matter, any unit choice) in the game. In fact, it is cheaper/the same cost as nearly all upgrades!  (Grots)

They can take more different models (as in models bought from games workshop) then any other army. (because of the looted wagon, they have this. They can take an ENORMOUS amount of different tanks, even though they all do the same thing. Try taking a looted monolith for some fun.)

Da orkses are da tuffest. Ya don’t believe me? Den come ‘ere ya runty little wimp!

Avatar

I figured, since the oh-so-popular movie Avatar cam out recently, I might as well post about how to kill the Eldar Avatars.

They are very similar to greater deamons, because they have WAY high WS, invulnerable saves, and low shooting capacity. It is immune to melta and flamers, has a 3+/4+ save (4+ invulnerable,) WS 10, BS 5, and T6. Not only that, it is a monstrous creature. Obviously, the normal tactic wont work here. if you were to take a mob of boys and attack, armed with slugga/choppa combo, he would strike first, causing 4 attacks, 3 hits, probably 3 wounds. That means you get 108 attacks, 18 hits,  three wounds, maybe one will pass the save. And that is ON THE CHARGE. Normally, you would only get maybe 2 wounds, of which usually .5 would pass the save. He is inflicting more wounds then thirty guys! obviously, the ork-swarm will not work here. What we need is something cheap. Something with high strength guns. It doesn’t need to penetrate armor, because of the invulnerable save, but it does need to have enough strength to wound and enough shots to hit. I am thinking: lootas! they are the perfect choice! on average you will probably get at least three turns of firing, because of the range, before the Avatar can get in close combat, by which time it will be to late. Use three warbuggies in a protective wall around them for even more time and shots. On average in a unit of 15 you will get thirty shots, ten hit, at worst three wound, (it is 3.5 wounds, if you do the math,) that is at least one wound. It may not sound to great, but you haven’t lost a single guy! do this two more times, he will be almost dead! take two units, and he wont stand a chance, plus you will have a big firing line to take on the eldar. However, this strategy may not work, especially if your enemy can infiltrate or deep strike to take them out. Another strategy is deffkoptas with big shootas, or you could use warbikes with dakkaguns, maybe flash gits, a ‘gunbeast’ style battlewagon with a deff rolla, (that word work well, you roll even just 6″ into him, and then blast away with your big shootas. Take a red paint job, and if he stays to whack the vehicle with his sword, you may just survive and have him right were he was. Simply lurch 1″ and then fire ALL your weapons! you still get the D6 S10 attacks, but now you get them with 4 big shootas! (maybe less, if you took several ‘weapon destroyed’ results.)

One question about the red paint job, can you move the 1″ if you get a vehicle immobilized result? i mean, you would still register as not moving, so…