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Eldar can do it.
Tau can do it.
IG can do it.

Hide your scoring units in tough/killy/fast Skimmers while you blast the opponent away then land and claim objectives on the last few turns.

Whats the best method for Chaos to beat this?

Rely on Termicide squads to fry them?
Use Oblits in cover as snipe them?
Load up on Combi-Predators/Havocks and try to outshoot them at range?
Rhino mounted 2x Melta squads?

All of these seem like options but none of them stand out as a surefire win.

Im not quite sure, my eldar have never lost to chaos.

A lot of what gives me issues are just lots of anti tank weapons and castling.

Either that or a highly aggressive player who pushes the game.

Havocs with Autocannons or Missile Launchers.

Get one Havoc with a Heavy Weapon and then one Havoc with a Bolter to carry ammo and catch bullets.

If you're planning on mobility, take Plasma Guns on those Havocs. If they're accompanied by a Champion with a Combi-Weapon, you can have eight Plasma shots at 12" and a Melta-shot if anyone tries to run you over with a Tank Shock.

Similarly, don't be afraid to give your Troop squads a heavy weapon, since they get them for cheap. Six Chaos Space Marine squads in Rhinos with Lascannons means a Lascannon where-ever he might try to go.

The thing about Eldar, Tau, and Imperial Guard is that they're all T3 armies. If they're burning points on skimmers, then you'll have enough bolters for anti-infantry work just by showing up. What you need then is the range, power, and volume to hit those skimmers and not give them a safe range to hang back at.

minigun762 wrote:Eldar can do it.
Tau can do it.
IG can do it.

Hide your scoring units in tough/killy/fast Skimmers while you blast the opponent away then land and claim objectives on the last few turns.

Whats the best method for Chaos to beat this?

Rely on Termicide squads to fry them?
Use Oblits in cover as snipe them?
Load up on Combi-Predators/Havocks and try to outshoot them at range?
Rhino mounted 2x Melta squads?

All of these seem like options but none of them stand out as a surefire win.

Tau are not shooting if their entire army is running around in skimmers. If half the tau's army is tied up in skimmers ignore the skimmers and squash the gunline.
The same applies to eldar. Eldar players usually panic and attempt to bring the squads inside their skimmers into the fray to keep the rest of their army from being slaughtered.

IG is the most difficult. Most likely they are going to attempt this with an outflanking Valkyrie. Keeping the skimmer in reserve removes the temptation to use it where it's needed for the first 3 turns, and having it come in from the side flanks helps make sure it lands on top of an objective.

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:
Either that or a highly aggressive player who pushes the game.

That seems to be a valid option, use as much armor as you can, move it right towards the center mass of the opponent. This will either cause them to split apart and be killed piecemeal or it forces them to engage you in a straight up fight.

Atleast that is the theory.

Its worked well against me. Often times one of two things happens. Either the player sits in his back corner afraid of being surrounded and promptly gets picked apart of he charges like a tard and gets picked apart.

Circling the wagons means everything can support each other. Its not a promised win but it works.

The answer is...variable

For Tau and eldar, concentrating anti-tank in a few dedicated units such as havocs is usually your most viable choice as the firepower levelled, by devilfish and waveserpents is very nickel and dime. Combine this with squads in rhinos packing meltas and your opponent has the eternal decision of the long range or short range threat.

IG is a little more problematic as a squadron of vendettas getting first turn can win a duel with a havoc squad (ask me how I know ). IG skimmer spam can engage a much more limited number of targets so spreading out your AT on multiple mobile platforms is a better approach. Also IG is the worst force to run DSing units against as your opponent could easily be packing the double mystics and they have more large blasts than the other two.

The general strategy for beating all 3 though is simply applying pressure. Overload their ability to deal with threats.

DP of Tzentch with Warptime and Bolt + wings. Moves 12 inches giving it an assault range of 18inches, getting a twinlinkied Str8 ap1 shot as well. Rerolling melee hits gives you 5 str 6+2d6 hits that you reroll to hit. Also, depending on how much of a Law student you feel like at the time, if you cause an Explosion, you reroll the 'To Wound' results on the guys inside. (Even if your group does not allow this, which most won't/don't, you at least have the Xport killed, the guys inside are easy enough to handle in Melee for a DP) Defilers also work wonders for this, armed with a lascannon arm.

Heres the trick.

Waveserpents, Valks and Fish are like Gnats. Hard to shoot, easy to swat.

Mastershake wrote:
The general strategy for beating all 3 though is simply applying pressure. Overload their ability to deal with threats.

In that light, does static long range firepower or fast moving short range weapons apply more pressure? My first impression is that people are more scared of things that are close to them, so Termicide units or equivalents are usually better for applying pressure.

It really depends on what it is. Ive had people deep strike 3 twin linked fusion gun crisis teams next to my tanks, only to watch me run away as fast as possible and avoid them. But a whole army of melta that gets right on top of me will be an issue. Like old guard drop troops. Same for bike marines. You want to wall the player off in a corner and force them to fight you in a close range match, something these armies suck at.

Shoot it with hvy support and close range troops.
Charge it with Troops and HQ options.

There's really not much to go on.
Don't spread out too far, have your main force go after the majority troop presence, and have the ranged things go after stragglers or lead serpants.

If at all possible engage them early.
They like to set up traps, set them off early, get in their face and deny them breathing room/time.

Sanctjud wrote:Shoot it with hvy support and close range troops.
Charge it with Troops and HQ options.
They like to set up traps, set them off early, get in their face and deny them breathing room/time.

That seems to be our best option, play aggressively and force them to adapt to us, not the other way around.

The big decision that I'm facing is whether long range firepower (AC/ML/LC) is better then Termicide/Outflanking Chosen.

Something you might consider is dual-use Havocs, something like two Heavy Weapons and two Plasma Guns so that the squad can start the game plinking transports and then advance to shoot up whatever. With two fire points on a Rhino, they have two guns available whether the transport is moving or not (or if they need to bail out of the Rhino).

Besides, the whole Chosen or Havocs is a false dichotomy: take both!

Also, DO NOT chase them in terrain, let them retreat into terrain, there is nothing funnier then seeing a transport fail its Dangerous Terrain test... As I (we, my gaming group) understand it, when a transport is wrecked/explodes during the movement phase, the units inside instantly die (as they do not have the ability to disembark in the same turn their transport has moved flat out during the MOVEMENT phase)

I believe you would go to the "wrecked/destroyed results" portion of the rules and see what happens to passengers.

ONCE a vehicle is wrecked/destroyed, you follow different rules for passengers.

Autocannon Havocs! And Defilers!

Remember it's a battlecanon!

Shadowbrand wrote:Autocannon Havocs!

I've often tried to fit AC Havocs into lists but each time I'm told to drop them because they're 1) not Oblits 2) too static 3) too expensive

I can't help but feel that since IG can work with AC spamming, why can't Chaos?

Because Guard put it on FA 14 SA 13, Chaos put it on FA/SA12.

Because the IG codex is higher on the Codex Creep?

"Codex Creep", now there's a term of art I haven't heard in a while. I don't think we've seen any for the last bunch of books, since Codex: Orks (or Eldar, which came first?).

In terms of Autocannon redundancy, the Imperial Guard have the advantage of cheap BS3 Autocannon Heavy Weapon Teams. Part of the utility of the Autocannon is having that second shot just in case you miss the first.

But you can have Autocannon redundancy in a Chaos Space Marine army if you want:

Terminators: Reaper Autocannon
Chosen: Autocannon
Chaos Space Marines: Autocannon
Havocs: up to four Autocannon
Defiler: Reaper Autocannon

Up to 21 Autocannons per army, which doesn't compare to Imperial Guard in terms of potential firepower, but stacks up pretty well for reliability since 2/3 of the Autocannons fired by the Chaos Space Marines should hit, while only 1/2 of the Autocannons fired by the Imperial Guard should hit (the ones that are Twin-Linked or BS4 come in comparable numbers to the Chaos Space Marine ones). 28 Autocannons wouldn't be out of the ballpark for a 2000pt Imperial Guard army.

The utility in the Havocs is the concentration of Autocannons that they have, meaning that they can concentrate on targets with little loss of utility from the non-autocannon wielding members of the squad, and still produce the volume of S7 shots that will glance and penetrate AV12 or less.

If you do take Havocs, or multiple units, you really do need to make the rest of your army task specific, so having units of Chosen and Chaos Space Marines armed specifically with Melta and Flamer weapons (paired, like to like) is then necessary to take care of tanks (AV13+).

Alternately you could go for unit-based flexibility and army-based redundancy, with Chaos Space Marine units armed with a Melta Gun and an Autocannon, Chosen with two Melta Guns, two Plasma Guns, and an Autocannon, and Havocs armed with two Autocannons and two Melta Guns.

Im in the 'overload with high priority targets' camp. Trying to kill his Skimmers allows the opponent to dictate the game. Moving towards the core of the opposing army with mobile high threat targets is how Id play it.

A list with 2 DP's, Greater Daemon, Dread, multiple Rhinos with CSM/PB + twin melta, Defilers etc. can force the opponent to react to too many things at once. This can win a game. Off course especially IG can just as well shoot everything just in time crumbling the army on the way in (Spearhead deployment for instance). Eldar and Tau miss volume of fire to deal with multiple threat well IMO. Killing stuff in CC is often a more reliable way of going about it than shooting.

Of course playing for objectives is a good alternative. You dont have to kill (all) the opponents skimmers to contest or claim objectives for instance. Dont stare yourself blind on the skimmers.

Still, its a more tricky army to fight with CSM. Especially the IG variant. I prefer an opponent who wants to come to me when I play CSM

Cilithan

@Nurglitch:
Well, I guess my definition for Codex Creep would be releasing codicies that are alot more dynamic and interesting than the Chaos Bland Marines codex....but hey, that's just me.

I don't know, Hvy weapon CSM troops just... arrrrggg screams Spiky Smurfs!!

I'm a big fan of the 4 Missile Launcher Havok squad. Extremely flexible with either 4 tank killing shots or frag blasts as the situation dictates. Also, anything above S8 is wasted ayway due to the Wave Serpent's force field so there is no wasted killing potential (and points spent on such).

Go with quad-autocannons and feel like a Chaos Space Marine, IMO .

Termicide/Oblit drops combined with an aggressive attack are my favored way to beat a skimmer heavy list.

Lol, I just think now that the Chaos threads are just merging into one big blob of cross-pollination...
Really shows a major blandness with the codex when every answer to any question boils down to the same answer in every thread… at least that’s the vibe I get…

Actually I think we're seeing that less and less these days. So far in this thread we've seen suggestions for four out of five Heavy Support choices (Obliterators, Predators, Havocs, Defilers) to hunt Skimmers.

I myself have pointed out that taking Heavy Weapons in Battle squads is one solution. Green Git likes Missile Launchers, other people like Autocannons.

Some people advocate Deep Strike squads of Terminators, others, such as Cilithan, note that one can overwhelm skimmers with an abundancy of targets.

Frankly I'm seeing a fair bit of depth here in the variety of opinions being offered.

Actually I meant about topics... we just had a topic about Oblits/Termicides...and then Iron_Chaos_Brute mentioned it and it was something I had to blurt out...like a word association game..

There are a variety of options yes.

Target Saturation is suggested:what else is new?
Termicides is suggested:what else is new?
The hvy support:I do see variety here, but you mean Four out of Six Hvy support options .

Your suggestion of hvy weapons in squads is unique, something I didn't consider (mainly due to the 'spikey marines' issue, but that's not really on topic).

Sanctjud:

You're right, I forgot Land Raiders. Speaking of, Chaos Land Raiders can do some decent anti-skimmer work since they get two Lascannons and a Heavy Bolter, all Twin-Linked.

Consider: Two Lascannons at 35pts each, one Heavy Bolter at 15pts, 50% mark-up for Twin-Linked (twice the reliability, same potential) makes it 125 points for the same potential firepower as five Havocs with two Lascannons and a Heavy Bolter, 160pts, while being genuinely more survivable.

Its an interesting point of difference in play-style between Chaos Marines and Space Marines, with the Chaos Land Raider doing well to shoot and scoot, either sitting still or more 12". The Loyalist Land Raider can instead grind forward 6" per turn for the same Lascannon fire (but not the Heavy Bolter), and costs commensurately more for the added utility.

Plus they act as anti-skimmer in a passive way, by providing a bunker for your Troops to hide in. Not ideal, but a good compromise if you want to deliver assault troops into combat.

The problem with using the Land Raider as a gun platform is that the Combi-Predator does the same job better for nearly 1/2 the price, plus skimmers are almost always AV12, so the Heavy Bolter = useless in this regard.

2 x TL Lascannons = 1.19 glances/penetrating hits per turn vs AV12
2 x Lascannons + 1 Autocannon = 1.33 glances/penetrating hits per turn vs AV12

Now you might argue that AV14/14/14 is worth the 90 point difference in price, but I'm not sure thats something you could really justify.

For my money, I think it boils down to 3 major options
Oblits, Predator or Havocs.

Oblits are oddly the most mobile but probably the least durable of all choices.
Predators are the most cost effective firepower but easiest to stop from shooting
Havocs are the most durable choice but suffer from being completely static

No big surprise that people take Oblits since they're the easiest to play with. The other two choices rely on good deployment and lanes of fire.
Of course the question must be asked, how important is mobility on a unit that has a 48" range weapon?