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Saythings wrote:
Just don't deepstrike next to them? 24" Grav, 24" MM, 36" Plasma Cannon, 48"(?) Lascannons. If they have their entire army in that 12" bubble, then they give away a large amount of board control. Not to mention you can just come in T2.

Agreed. Although if they leave the plasma oblit alone, it'll delete at least a squad a turn.

Losing a squad a turn isn't that bad though. And the ASMs and the rest of the army can assault that squad now. You have 8 squads from the formation and at least another pod from the main army. As well as a few TFCs (most likely the best addition to this formation).

Saythings wrote:
Losing a squad a turn isn't that bad though. And the ASMs and the rest of the army can assault that squad now. You have 8 squads from the formation and at least another pod from the main army. As well as a few TFCs (most likely the best addition to this formation).

If the ASMs are going to assault the plasma oblit, they're within 12". Poof.

The following turn?

Saythings wrote:
The following turn?

Ahh, gotcha. I guess they would be priority for shooting at then.

xD Yeah, but there are 4 squads of ASMs. And I'm assuming 2-3 squads of them will die. It's just the pressure they bring that is important, while the Devs and Cents (personal choice) remain firing.

All I'm saying is Coteaz himself shouldn't play ANY part against this formation if the SM player is playing correctly. He's a waste of points and an ally slot (for Skyhammer purposes). Once again, this is just my opinion. I don't see him being an effective counter.

/shrug A feth you bubble is a useful thing against it. Just saying.

The best unit to bring with grav cannon devs in skyhammer is tiggy+ stock non grav cannon cents. Tiggy gives them rending. Ha-ha.




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Think of this-

Two 7 man dev squads with cannons (couple extra wounds) put a combi grav on the Sgt!
Two 10 man ASM with melta bomb Sgt.

Tiggy
Stock dev centuiarns in a pod

Two scout units with camo cloaks and heavy bolters with ignore cover rounds.

That brings you in a little under 1500 (about 20-30 pts I believe)

I have avoided Coteaz with every BA drop unit I have ever fielded. Of course, I'm not greedy and I don't use infernus pistols. GK are pretty poor imo if you know how to fight them.

What gives scouts ignore cover?

Saythings wrote:
What gives scouts ignore cover?

Special HB rounds.

Isn't that hellfire rounds only? Not special ammo from Sterns.

Saythings wrote:
Isn't that hellfire rounds only? Not special ammo from Sterns.

Right and just for the HB.

As far as bubble wraps go, Typhus Zombies do it better than Cultists. Already Fearless, FNP against the Assault Marines, cheap as chips.

I like the idea of Spawn, though. And, if you're not against Skyhammer, you get to have Spawn for your Bike Lord/Terminator.

Sorry guys been away for a while.

Some good ideas. I'd like to address a couple in regards to BA though.
Castling - apart from Rhinos we dont really have any cheap units, and sticking all our assault units wrapped in one corner takes them not only away from where they want to be but also very likely clumps them up for blast weapons. Not so bad for 5pt guardsmen but lethal for 23pt DC.
Voluntary GtG - If BA do this we lose straight away. Not only do we then fail to get into combat, but we've just exposed 4 of our units to another round of grav fire.

With BA I would actually recommend dispersion of your onboard forces. If you are playing MSU scouts with some serious tank you could try to layer scout units around the tanks to block the grav devs out beyond 24" of them.

With drop pod BA I would disperse when I drop to claim as many objectives as possible and kill the ObjSec units you can. Let the skyhammer kill a few 5 man TAC squads and then kill the grav devs with your follow up forces. If the skyhammer waits until turn 2 then they do less damage and you can kill more of the ObjSec units.

CSM are a much tougher call. Really CSM on their own are already outmatched by pretty much any army in the game. If you are running dreadclaw chosen with max spawn and either renegades or forgeworld tank support then you can either disperse and take your lumps the same as a BA player or layer around yourself with cheap zombies, scouts, etc. A nice little bonus is when the skyhammer chooses when to come down you can then choose to either deploy and start summoning daemons and dispersing your units or you can put the melee and bubble wrap on the outside. A nice little bonus is that many of the best chaos units are high wound no armour save, cheap walkers, or in rhinos.

Speaking of rhinos they are an excellent protection against this formation. For 35 pts you get something that is only hurt on a 6 by the best weapons in the skyhammer. You also get small profile so you can usually start with a 5+ cover save and then pop smoke if you get a chance to right before the skyhammer falls. Against UM with reroll to hit it takes the 2 grav cannons to have a significant chance to pop a single Sv5+ rhino. Actually on average it will take 3 grav cannons to do it. It also wastes the assault if the assault squads have to assault a rhino.

If the dark angel rules leaks are true, the assault sqauds won't be a threat with full bs overwatch, the grav devs and cents will be a pain but as others have said rhinos can solve that, ravenwing with a dark shroud will be fine too, bar 1 unit that can ignore cover with tiggy.

 Formosa wrote:
If the dark angel rules leaks are true, the assault sqauds won't be a threat with full bs overwatch, the grav devs and cents will be a pain but as others have said rhinos can solve that, ravenwing with a dark shroud will be fine too, bar 1 unit that can ignore cover with tiggy.

And even then its not a guarantee to have ignore cover.

Dispertion does seem the key here. Kinda poo poos the normal BA tactic of focusing the hammer blow on one part of the opponents army before mopping up the rest.
I'd be incredibly worried about the 20/10 shot tl overwatch from a squad/combat-squad. Nothing aside from a single psychic power to counter that though... maybe combined charge with scouts the only other option, not going to be that easy with maximum dispertion and the opponent choosing where they come in though.
3d6 GtG is also a big worry for an assault based army, which suggests pilling (one L, two L's? Neither looks right) up on DC due to their fearless.
I think my plasma oblitorator (as suggested by some posters previously) would come into play to deal with those devs. Most optimal solution by the looks of it. It's just all about surviving those 40 grav shots and a charge by AMs with a low model count army...


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I have 3 rhinos. They could prove effective shielding the units from the grav. But then if they don't shoot the rhinos, I have to disembark and take the grav shots anyway. Also kinda ruins JP BA.

@Poly Ranger
Do you play with forgeworld? A typhon or whirlwind scorpius could make a huge difference here. There are also some very nice null deployment options in the form of automated artillery.

I think the 3 major play methods of BA are;
1) Scouts spam taking advantage of furious charge scouts. This gives a 60 ObjSec model + whatever heavy hitters you bring. With infiltrate, dispersion, and GtG when the grav shoots at you I think this is actually not going to care that much about skyhammer. The big thing will be to keep the assault marines and grav from killing your heavy hitters so your heavy hitters can kill the grav devs.
2) Drop Pod TAC squads with HF and melta/combi melta combat squads. IME this usually includes some units of death company. IMO with a grain of salt having not played this match up yet this is going to depend on who goes first and if the skyhammer drops turn 1 or 2. I think the general strategy is going to either drop down and damage the support units with your units dispersed around the map the skyhammer will find it hard to outscore you. Alternately you could drop empty pods to double up on the units coming in turn 2+. Skyhammer is going to find killing MSU marines and drop pods on objectives to be very annoying. Hopefully you can deal with the grav devs before you bring your elite stuff like death company in though.
3) Rhino + TAC marines. There are some benefits to this with the BA TAC marines being generally not bad and the BA vehicles being faster than normal when used in conjunction with the armour spam. I am not sure this army will do well against most opponents but the skyhammer is going to really hate LoS blocking important stuff with rhinos and having to pop rhinos to get to TAC squads (and even then still not necessarily having LoS due to not exploding the rhino).

FnP is a nice bonus against grav weapons but on most of the units BA players traditionally want it on it isn't going to help enough. If you have something you want to deliver for sure you might want to consider a caestus assault ram. I had some luck with a unit of 10 TH/SS termies with a chaplain in the last SM codex in a caestus assault ram with a skyshield landing pad + fast takeoff. This way you can either use it to protect your other units turn 1 if your caestus would die or get a turn 1 multi charge with a nasty unit. The key is the pts level you play at. The higher the pts level the more unit density and thus the more units you can get into a multi charge. At less than 1850 pts I wouldn't even consider it but above that it can be a pretty amusing strategy. This works even better with a good melee threat that can combat squad.

I think transports and reserves is the answer, from my viewpoint it is simply an alpha strike with a mask on.

Yeh I use FW. Scout spam could work, especially if combat squadded. They'll get slaughtered if the ASMs get into assault though. Will lose at least half of them on the drop even if using GtG though (unless the board is strewn with at least a ruin for each combat squad).
Pods are a counter which will become a win-on-the-coin-toss of first turn scenario. Even then, if the BA pods get the jump on the skyhammer pods and have a poor turn, they get butchered the next turn.
Rhinos is probably the best bet. Although will only work with tac marines. Who then shoot back and kill a handful at best, before being wiped by the second round of grav. But will be better than ASMs or DC in the open though.
Like the idea of the Caestus. May try it with my ravens - haven't done a termi assault from them for donkeys!

Ok how about this. I have about 10k worth of BA. I am not investing in anything more for my BA aside from FW. GW have had enough of my money with that army and I shouldn't have 10k of models invalidated by one formation.
-I own 3 pods.
-I own 3 rhinos.
-I own 20 scouts (10 sniper and 10 ccw/bp)
I have tons of DC (both with and without jps), SG, ASMs (both with and without jps), Tacs, Baals (6), Preds (2), Vindis (4), 2 SRs (so no assault from DS formation), Termis by the bucket load of both types, most SCs, 2 LRs (redeemer and godhammer), a Sicaran, 6 rapier laser destroyers and an allied IK. I also have 2 bunkers and a plasma oblitorator.
Since I can't run mass scouts, full pod or full rhino list with this, what would you suggest I do?

It has occured to me whilst writing this that my Flamestorm Baals could possibly come back off the shelf.

Something like the following:
FT strikeforce:
Librarian
Jp

5 scouts
bp & ccw

5 DC
jps, 1 pf

5 DC
jps, 1 pf

5 DC
jps, 1 pf

5 ASMs
jps, 2 melta, combi- melta

5 ASMs
Jps, flamer, combi-flamer

5 ASMs
2 melta, combi-melta
pod

5 ASMs
2 melta, combi-melta
pod

5 ASMs
2 plasma, combi-plasma
pod

Baal
flamestorm

Baal
flamestorm

Baal
flamestorm

Imperial knight Paladin

1850pts.

Outflanking nurgle bikes to plasma the devs should be nice. It might also delay the noobhammer if they're going to hope your reserves come in first to avoid getting countered.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Dispertion does seem the key here. Kinda poo poos the normal BA tactic of focusing the hammer blow on one part of the opponents army before mopping up the rest.
I'd be incredibly worried about the 20/10 shot tl overwatch from a squad/combat-squad. Nothing aside from a single psychic power to counter that though... maybe combined charge with scouts the only other option, not going to be that easy with maximum dispertion and the opponent choosing where they come in though.
3d6 GtG is also a big worry for an assault based army, which suggests pilling (one L, two L's? Neither looks right) up on DC due to their fearless.
I think my plasma oblitorator (as suggested by some posters previously) would come into play to deal with those devs. Most optimal solution by the looks of it. It's just all about surviving those 40 grav shots and a charge by AMs with a low model count army...


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I have 3 rhinos. They could prove effective shielding the units from the grav. But then if they don't shoot the rhinos, I have to disembark and take the grav shots anyway. Also kinda ruins JP BA.

Put the jump packs behind the Rhinos.


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 CKO wrote:
I think transports and reserves is the answer, from my viewpoint it is simply an alpha strike with a mask on.

Reserves are a still a fantastically poor idea.

Use a bunker.

Anywayz, there was a game with the brand new skyhammer madness in our flgs. It was SM against old dark angels with termies in landraiders. And...skyhammer failed. They didn't manage to kill a landraider in 4++ so that termies got out and ate them the next turn. ASM got murderised by termies, devs got tied up.

Grav's pretty expensive for them, really. And 5 multimeltas are not overly great too.

This formation can hurt some armies a lot. Like tau or eldar. But i'm not seeing it being too frightening for my orks, for example.

CSM...well, it depends on what you're running. If that's a bunch of spawns and cultists - no big deal. They're even making your life easier by coming close themselves. If you're running 20 infiltrating marines, got to change the way you're planning to do stuff. If they're not fearless, it might get problematic. But you can survive grav by sitting into a ruin. g2g and than use this 3+ or 2+ cover save - will do. Can also utilise fearless characters you're probably gona have - like Ahriman or Huron. You had a plan to deliver those 20 marines in the first place, didn't you?..

@Poly Ranger and Martel732
Using cheap rhinos or better (in a TAC sense) would be any vehicles less than 130 pts that you don't need as much as your unit it is shielding. I have even used a sicaran for this purpose once as the unit behind it was worth a lot more and I didn't tailor the list.

Skyhammer is a wierd one. It does a huge amount of damage to shooty elite armies while doing relatively little to MSU and horde lists.

Another funny thing is that the grav devs while having a lot of damage potential against Tau will rarely get to do anything against a well designed Tau list due to the interceptor and the 24" range.

Skyhammer requires several different responses depending on if you go first and if the skyhammer declared they DS turn 1 or 2 during deployment. If the skyhammer didn't have to declare when it deploys it would be almost impossible to form a strategy based counter but luckily it does and this lets to reserve if they drop turn 1, circle the wagons if you can take the heat, or disperse if they drop turn 2 and you cannot handle the damage and disruption abilities.

I don't know, even if I MSU my BA the skyhammer can target upto 8 of my units if they combat squad on the drop, and easily make their points back in just one turn of shooting (let alone assault) if I have a reasonable amout of DC and/or SG (and what respectable BA army doesn't nowadays?).
The problem with holing up bunkers is that it is counter to the BA playstyle and costs 55pts per unit (minimum) extra that doesn't really hit back. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE bunkers, for either slingshotting with escape hatch for foot units or a gun bunker with ammo dump. Neither of which though compliments BA at all.
If I was the skyhammer player and my opponent had hidden all his expensive units in Rhinos then I'd just come down and shoot other stuff, when he disembarks those units from the Rhinos, THATS when I'd shoot them.
Rhinos in a wagon circle isn't a bad idea, but then they have just pinned your entire army in place with the threat of half of theirs, and it can easily be penetrated (I mean the circle here not the armour) by removing a single vehicle.
Hiding JP troops behind a rhino or 2 rather than a circle of them will rarely work as the pod can just outflank it on deployment.

So dispertion and/or cities of death (to prevent easy pod deployment) seems the best way outside of a plasma oblitorator. Or list tailoring with flamestorms.

GtG with a nearby fearless character to get them back up is indeed an option (my chaplains may come back into play, Huron and Lords already were ;-)). Cypher and an allied Issodon for 2 lots of shrouded to further increase it is also an option. What though is stopping them from targetting the fearless squad that the chaplain is already in?

I don't use SG. I still think they are a rip off at 33 ppm. Too much AP 2 in the game. Given how long they last on the battlefield, I'd pay no more than 25 ppm.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't use SG. I still think they are a rip off at 33 ppm. Too much AP 2 in the game. Given how long they last on the battlefield, I'd pay no more than 25 ppm.

My lychguard (old pariah models who I used to use for my crypteks in royal courts) would tend to agree with you. They are 25pts and FAAAR more durable. However SG do have much better mobility which more than compensates. I'd say 28pts minimum to 30pts maximum to be in the right spot. I can get their worth out of them with a priest and a terrain heavy board though, especially now we can take more than 5 in a unit to benefit from the priest and banner.

Poly Ranger wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I don't use SG. I still think they are a rip off at 33 ppm. Too much AP 2 in the game. Given how long they last on the battlefield, I'd pay no more than 25 ppm.

My lychguard (old pariah models who I used to use for my crypteks in royal courts) would tend to agree with you. They are 25pts and FAAAR more durable. However SG do have much better mobility which more than compensates. I'd say 28pts minimum to 30pts maximum to be in the right spot. I can get their worth out of them with a priest and a terrain heavy board though, especially now we can take more than 5 in a unit to benefit from the priest and banner.

Yeah, but that gets very expensive and single grav-barrage still guts the unit. Or Riptide blast. Or D-scythes. LOL the D-scythes. Jump packs are cute, but they are still gonna get shot to pieces in 7th ed. The game has truly come back to 2nd ed marine durability. I'm just waiting for the game where I don't even get a turn now.