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One of my friends has been setting up a space marine army after having played Dark elder since 3rd ed, and has chosen on an army led by shrike. After battling this army i realised how powerful shrike makes the army, he put shrike in a 10 man assault terminator squad infilitrates them and 3 tactical squads all with Rhinos, a 10 man assault squad and 2 whirlwinds. I have so far only managed a draw with him, any tips at beating not only him but any shrike led armies, which im sure there are alot more of, would be greatly appreciated. I have fought him with my Marines and my incomplete nids, a list im still trying to sort out.

Its difficult without knowing what you've got but with marines I would suggest a deep-striking army. Drop pods, termies, land speeders. You can see where he deploys (and infiltrates) and then react accordingly.

Take out his vehicles with podding sternguard/tacticals with meltas, melta-armed speeders or assault cannon/cyclone armed termies and force him to run at your guns. Even with fleet, correct drops on your part will make it impossible for him to get to you before you've killed most of his assaulters.


Nids no idea (I don't play them, sorry..)

he put shrike in a 10 man assault terminator squad infilitrates them and 3 tactical squads all with Rhinos, a 10 man assault squad and 2 whirlwinds.

Looks like an interesting army.
Ten Assault Termies are unstoppable during a few turns, no matter if Shrike leads them or not.
You need a fast army that outmaneuvers the Termies.

Play White Scars

The tyranids shouldn't have much of a problem with the assault termies. Just hit the squad with a hivetyrant and a large genestealer squad all at once.

get lots of template weapons like flamers plasmas and rockits most of these he will still get a armor save but he will have to take more saves and more saves means more fails.

It depends. If he's running a lot of thunder hammer storm shield termies, genestealers and hive tryants are going to bounce off that unit.

It's a really tough unit to deal with. Similar to the Vulkan temi hammer unit concept.

If he's running hammers, tar pitting with a without number gaunt squad isn't a bad idea. Ultimately your best bet is to lore him away from mission objectives with big models, and then tar pit the bastard.

Otherwise, as it's been mentioned you have to go full bore into the unit to destroy it. Going in half assed will only end in a loss for you. Nids have enough hammers to punch this unit out. The rest of the army is fairly easy to deal with.

Pete

Storm shields aren't that hard to get through. It's the same as pulling through standard power armor, only nothing you have gets to ignore it. Cause 30 power weapon wounds and statistically all 10 should die. It's not hard to reduce the return and wipe out the squad over a few turns. Tyrant guard with lashwhips dramatically reduce the ammount of attacks back and with close combat MC's and lots of rending you can get the job done fast.

As for defeating the squad with marines... Sternguard with plasma guns and devastators with plasma canons will make short work of them. Let them shatter the first squad then just hit them with as much plasma and melta as you can muster. Or a vindicator.

thunder hammer/storm shield is great against power weapons and AP2 firepower.

It is, however, a complete waste of points against attrition due to rate of fire/hits.

massed high AP fire will kill them, high strength up to S6 helps by making more wounds

more wounds = more saves = more ones = more dead terminators being carried home on their storm shields.

for tyranids, Gaunts shooting will kill enough.

Space marines need bolters, heavy bolters, frag missiles and flamers (though the flamers are pretty last ditch)

Gaurd use lasguns and multilasers

Eldar scatter lasers and dire avengers bladestorming

orks use shoota boyz

tau basically all can do it.

demons suck at it but flamers are quite nasty.

SOB have lots of flamers

anything else I've left out?

A tac squad of nothing but bolters will have 20 shots at 12 inches. This will give you ~14 hits. This will give you ~7 wounds. He will likely fail one save and lose one terminator. A terminator is 40 points, a full tactical squad is usually 200. It's a bad trade.

It takes about 16 bolter shots to kill one terminator. It takes 160 to kill a single full terminator squad. 8 full squads of tac marines doubletapping into a single termy squad (something that realistically would never happen especially when you consider that its an illegal number of tacticals) can kill it.

Massed firepower doesn't work against terminators. Flamers get you too close to the punchy death hands they have and it's just a waste of points to throw massed shots at them. Why people keep bringing up the "effectiveness" of massed firepower I'll never know. Thats akin to saying that you should beat up a khornate daemon horde with nothing but assault units because you can get a lot of assaut units. Punching the ocean doesn't kill it.

drop pod with sterngaurd and a lot of flamers and heavy flamers. you will put a gak load of wounds on the squad and stand a decent shot of killing shrike.

Thanx for all the tips guys!
He does run atleast half that squad with hammers and shields
the fleet of foot infiltrtating termies managed to pounce my tyrant
counter charged with a carni and a squad of genestealers... they all died next turn the genestealers did manage to take a few down but not enough it took a another carni just to kill Shrike and get the squad down to one man..

Trying my chaos that i havent played for a while against him so will see how it goes

weight of fire is the way to go againt TH/SS terminators. dakka fexes and tyrans (especially ones with wings) will cause him problems. you just have to hit that squad will all the shooting you have untill it goes away. hes spending almost 600pts on that squad so if you hit it hard enough it shouldnt be too much of a problem. dont try in engage it in combat with that is tradionally thought to be good againt terminators, genestealers and MCs, because all those 3++ saves seriously reduce their effectiveness, and the S8 attacks back will kill you (as you have found out). with weight of fire, they die only slightly less than regular marines. big hordes of gaunts should be able to plow enough shots into him to force him to fail some armour saves.

32 gaunts with fleshborers will on average cause 2 dead terminators. this may not seem like a lot, but that unit only costs 192pts, less than a third of that his does. a couple of units of those + any other shooting you have then followed up with a charge will do him some serious damage.

finally if he mixes his unit between TH/SS and LCs then make sure you check his wound allocation. it may be hes rolling his 3+ invulnerables when he shouldnt be.

weight of fire is the way to go againt TH/SS terminators.

It appears that 10 TH/SS Termies are unstoppable.
They could walk down the field accompanied by some tanks to diminish incoming fire.

Huh? How does 10 TH/SS Termies become unstoppable?

The squad is comparable in points to 30 daemonettes, 25 bloodletters or 23 pink horrors. The smart money's still on the horrors shooting them dead while walking away to keep range, but the odds would still favor daemons slightly if the engagements are even on points.

The only advantage the termies have is that with Shrike they might massacre an unsuspecting unit. Since Shrike's about the cost of 5 more assault terminators, my numbers above should be adjusted accordingly.

Like Regwon says, the only reason that squad is so tough is that you aren't using an equal value of troops against it.

For that matter, an equal point engagement would be Shrike and 10 assault terminators versus 35 tactical marines.

Stand and shoot until he's a little over 12" away, and then run away. All you need to do is keep shooting and wait for him to fail a few saves each turn.

Remember that if an infiltrating army is giving you trouble, you don't have to start on the board at all.

solkan wrote:For that matter, an equal point engagement would be Shrike and 10 assault terminators versus 35 tactical marines.

Stand and shoot until he's a little over 12" away, and then run away. All you need to do is keep shooting and wait for him to fail a few saves each turn.

You do realise that Shrike gives the squad fleet right?

For a space marine's force here are some ideas:

Librarian with the null zone power attach him to a your own giant terminator squad and go to town.

Don't want you own 400 point slow moving squad of non ranged combat goodness?

Hit the squad with a vindicator or two. with the null zone activated.

Maybe drop pod some combi melta sternguard to blow those whirlwinds up before they even get a shot off.

Librarian with 2 vindicators has a base cost of 330 points. His Shrike squad costs 590. The rest of the army has fleet, but they still have to deploy in his zone so you should have a turn or two of shooting before he says hello.

Put everyone in rhinos/land raiders?

Null zone + a masters orbital bombardment after they consolodate from combat is prety vicious. Same with null zone + a vindicator shot. Should kill more than half the squad in one template if you hit all 10 (unlikely, but still, thats a massive number of points they're loosing).

biztheclown wrote:Remember that if an infiltrating army is giving you trouble, you don't have to start on the board at all.

Starting off the board is 1 of the worst things you could do. This is why.

Me: Haha my whole army infiltrates and fleets 1st turn charge!

You: Oh i'll just deploy off the board. Now what are you gonna do (evil laugh)

Me: Ummm let me think for a sec oh yeah deploy my rmy on your table edge so when all your infantry come on they die.

You: but wait I didn't think of that.

Me: I bet you didn't sucks to be you (evil louder laugh)

If someone's bringing 10 assult termies and shrike they've already passed the I care about being a dick in a friendly game phase they will most likely try this one.

three drop podding iron clads (points roughly for points) will num shrike & his fellow chums.

You either drop them next to em and just bait him to charge or give yourself a bit of room to move in and charge.

Ha, you could drop three surrounding shrike & the termies facing outwards. Whats he gonna do! Ooo it would be so worth loosing a dred to shrikes lone boltpistol hitting rear armour. Yes, thunderhammers*. Walker, AV13, Extra armour. Double dred CC weps. 2 more weps for damage chart longevity. Shrike would get targetted & shrike would die.

I assume hes still an IC & the squad hes with isnt hes retinue? I have read the dex but just wanting to make sure.

* Thunder hammers that cause an unsaved wound reduce I to 1. (for awhile) The only mention of wounds for walkers is a hit on the damage table but then its not an unsaved wound, just wounds for the purposes of winning combat. (And shaken hits are ignored by walkers in CC)

Oh, for high-point models - a few biked farseers can nip around & mindwar off shrike then the termies, while shruiken catapulting them (moving back the 6'' in the assualt phase & hope they dont fleet 6 XD )

try a vindicator. its s10 ap2 main gun will insta-kill almost nething or just anything thats s8

to bad they're crap in 5th

Warboss Spleenstaba wrote:to bad they're crap in 5th

Lol coming from a ork player of BS5 and moves most of his tanks.
I think they go better especially with no partials!
Just take Null zone. Or you could use a thunderfire, doesnt that thing make dangerous terrain? Like move, run and assault thats like 3 dangerous terrain tests.

Warboss Spleenstaba wrote:to bad they're crap in 5th

Vindicators are fantastic in fifth, I don't know what you've been smoking but you should probably lay off of it for a while.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Warboss Spleenstaba wrote:to bad they're crap in 5th

Vindicators are fantastic in fifth, I don't know what you've been smoking but you should probably lay off of it for a while.

or give some to MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Anyways... isn't the whole point of that massive 600 point unit to infiltrate a squad that is so nasty, and durable that it has to be dealt with? Yes, 600 points is a hell of a lot, but when your talking about fielding 3 drop podding iron clads to wipe it out, or massed fire, or squads that shoot, run away (in which case they are cornered, or squished between the termies and the real attack force , which by now is happily dug in on objectives or breathing up your crack) your are talking about the single biggest disruption to your battle plans that I can think of.

Odds are very good that the squad will never make up its points, but it has the potential to, and it is not there to make up its points, but it is there to disrupt the army.

on a note that is Almost related to the OP:

Which one is deadlier? The lightning claws, which do more damage almost across the board, or the thunder hammer/storm shield, who can walk through ap2 fire like nothing?

i use shrike, i love the effect he has on the army,

yes a squad of 10 AssMarines and Shrike are pretty good for the first couple of turns, then they die, out of 10 games they have survived once,

some people like a big tarpit unit, a friend of mine used 20 khorne beserkers to kill them, sure i killed 15 models but he still had enough left to draw the game with those 5 men,

either tarpit him and his unit, or hide in vehicles and use vindicators to your hearts content

ShumaGorath wrote:

Warboss Spleenstaba wrote:to bad they're crap in 5th

Vindicators are fantastic in fifth, I don't know what you've been smoking but you should probably lay off of it for a while.

what the hell are you going on about an ork player with bs 5 and moves his tanks crap? it's bs 2 and i also play space marines i have just heard so many people tell me that the assaulting vehicles rear armour rule in 5th has lead many people to not take vindicators as the can get owned with rear av 10 their vindys keep getting flanked and raped as they are not that fast either, just what they've told me and it seems like a valid point sure they're cannons are rape but under certain cituatuations they don't do as well (reason why i don't have one) but if all of you say their good maybe u've had bad experiences with them not saying ur wrong, just what i've heard... jesus tap dancing christ i didn't mean to insult your girlfriend.. i mean vindicator.