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So twice now in a tournament I've played Mech Guard players. Once I played it in a friendly. All three times I come to the same conclusion. How in the hell do you beat a Mech Guard army. I play SM's and I love em to death so typically I take a balance of AT and CC units. However up against a Mech Guard army that doesn't seem to work. First off if I have Lascannons they seem to have a small chance of destroying a Leman Russ no matter what type, secondly if I give Meltaguns to my Bikes or Land Speeders they get the job done but usually then get destroyed afterwards. So your talking one tank for one Land Speeder not worth it in my opinion. I have Terminators as well and I've tried giving them Chainfists, I've tried giving them transports, I've even tried giving them Chainfists and Transports but against all that S 10 AP 2 Medusa artillery I can't do anything about it. So my only question is. HELP!

Edited once for Spelling.

Why haven't you tried TH/SS terminators?

Guard have a level of ease of play and effectiveness only matched by 4th edition eldar and 3rd edition iron warriors, prepare your anus!

With that said, sometimes your best choice can be stunlocking key units and swarming them.

The biggest mistake you can make is going straight at his entire force. Try to keep your stuff together and flank him. Pick out isolated parts of his army. Its very difficult to flat out deny him shots, but try to make him shoot at only what he can and not the things he wants to. Battle cannons fired at clumped marines are devastating. Battle cannons being fired at a rhino in cover.... not so much. Shoot the small tanks, assault the leman russes. Shooting at leman russes with anything outside of meltas within half range or rear armor shots is wasting firepower that would be better served shooting his chimeras or medusas. The medusa is fragile and direct fire, so concentrate your firepower on it and other light tanks until they are disabled. You're probably going to have to eat the russes firepower for a couple turns, but if you can get into assault with it, they'll crumble easily. If he uses veterans loaded with special weapons, don't rush in foolishly. They can bring a lot of pain at short range. Try to dismount them so they become easy targets.

couple of ideas, as vanilla SM.

1) Vulkan helps, he twinlinks all meltas and THs
2) attack bikes are really good as you can hide them speeders also good
3) TH/SS termies work very well
4) don't play his game prioritze what can hurt you the most

thats about it

Two words that strike fear in my heart as an IG player: Deep Strike.

If that's too many words for you, try this one: Outflank.

We're squishy in the back, and relatively slow. You should use that to your advantage. Even with a lot of guns, a deepstriked drop pod carrying an ironclad dreadnought right next to my tank squads is not what I want to be seeing turn one.

I played two out of three games this weekend versus IG with Deep Striking Blood Angels. It worked out well. I kept almost everything in reserve and all that firepower did little on the first turn. I dropped in two Dreads with Meltaguns and locator beacons on their pods. Next turn the Jump Pack troops drop in close to the pods so they don't scatter, re rolling reserve rolls and using Melta gun death to kill the worst threats while the surviving Dreads rampage through the vehicles. Death Company provides a big scary fire magnet that if ignored will hit like a steam roller and if shot at soaks up fire from the other units. Truthfully, in all three games the Death Company were fire magnets and the Dreads and Assault Squads along with Mephiston were the real killers.

Just drop everything bunched together on a flank. Use vehicles against themselves by forcing them to shoot across each other, blocking LOS and providing cover saves. If you have pods use them to block/hinder LOS and provide firing problems. If he castles up in a corner, assault assault assault. Multicharge with units that have powerfists/thunderhammers/melta bombs and krak grenades.

So, the biggest thing with overcoming a mech list, I believe, is overcoming the fear factor. People see 14 vehicles on the board and panic, and once they start getting pie platted, they shut down. There's a reason that it's called "leafblower", namely that their opponents were so psychologically overwhelmed that they felt like they just got blown off the board.

So the first thing you need to do is to peel back the facade. Chimeras are a low-firepower unit. The guys inside the chimera are predominantly BS3 and in any case only pack a few guns on top of only a few T3 5+ bodies. The best advice I can give is to ignore anything in a chimera (except for how it affects scoring on objectives).

As you mentioned, it's the big guns hiding behind the steel curtain that are doing the damage. Count yourself lucky your opponent is taking russes, rather than artillery, which packs in even more firepower per point. In any case, THIS is what you need to destroy. After this, cracking open AV10 and feasting on the T3 goo inside shouldn't be nearly as difficult.

So, what do you do to take down big guns behind a wall of chimeras? Well, don't try to play red rover with the chimeras, for one. As mentioned, deepstriking and outflanking meltas gives you a "free" attack on his big guns. Once you get on the ground, all guard vehicles are a breeze to clean up in close combat. So, defang your opponent quickly by drop podding combi-melta sternguard and MM/DCCW dreads et. al, and you'll have much less pain as you clear up the rest of the scoring units.

The key is mobility. Gunlining even a part of your army is setting yourself up for failure against a mech guard list.

Sanguinis wrote:First off if I have Lascannons they seem to have a small chance of destroying a Leman Russ no matter what type

First of all, use the right tool for the job. A LC has a 3.7% of destroying AV 14. Instead use your LC on AV12, where they have a 44.48% of effecting the target. (59.43% if twin-linked).

Sanguinis wrote:I give Meltaguns to my Bikes or Land Speeders they get the job done but usually then get destroyed afterwards.

These are the right weapons for the job. A melta shot up close has a 21.12% to destroy AV 14, and speedy bikes can maneuver to shoot at the sides quite easily. Turbo-boosting will help them survive as they get a 3+ cover save. If you go with the Vulcan option, your chances of destroying those AV 14 vehicles jump to 28.03%.
If you are trading a speeder/bike for a russ, then its a great trade -- imagine it like trading a bishop for a rook in chess.

Sanguinis wrote:S 10 AP 2 Medusa artillery I can't do anything about it. So my only question is. HELP!

As has been mentioned, deep-striking is a great fear for IG. Deep strike your terminators in.

This is where you want to use multi-unit tactics. Use your long range LC's to shoot the medusa(s). All you need to do is shake the vehicle, and it cannot fire. If you are running regular termies, you can also use cyclone MLs to shoot at side/rear armor. This gives you extra insurance vs. the LC not doing the job.

Wow you guys have all given me some great advice and I definatly think I'm going to start deep striking in some units behind the vehicles to cause some massive damage. I love Terminators to so I'm probably gonna deep strike in some TH/SS Terminators to add extra punch. Since the chapter I play is BA's should I go with deep striking assault sqauds with two meltas each since they count as scoring units for BA's plus they got DOA which makes it much easier to hit where you were aiming.