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I'm a bit scared. I'm going to be playing my buddy tonight in a kill point game, my Eldar vs his Blood Angels. He claims to have an unbeatable Kill Point Army for our point level.

I've noticed he bought a few new models last week and has been furiously getting them table ready...if my research on his units are correct, he's going to field this against me:

Astorath the Grim
13 Death Company
13 Death Company
And then the rest of the points are enough Thunder Hammers to block out the sun.


Am I really going to be facing an unbeatable foe? What sort of tactics, if any, could I use to pull out a win in this situation?

wipe him out with shooting?
Dont let him assault?
If he does assualt make sure its when you can easily wipe him out?

Thats really not a hard army. Sure 3 kp is 3 kp but just table him.

I did forget to mention that it looks like they all have jump packs...so they're also jump infantry. That makes ranging them a little harder.

He has rage on his units, so lead him around with a falcon while the rest of your force focus-fires down one squad at the time. (start with astorath squad)

Mechdar should be a nightmare for this BA list

With jump packs and Astorath at those numbers, he can only afford 4 thunder hammers, for the record. Just saying. Besides, there's nothing to be scared of. If he had Lemartes, then you should be scared, but he doesn't, so it's not too bad.

Anyway, charge him with Banshees and watch him lose. Bascially, load them in a waveserpent, fly them right up to the Death Company, stop, he has to assault the wave serpent on his turn (Make sure that the serpent is as isolated as possible from the rest of your army! If your opponent is smart he'll just slingshot his death company to another unit!). If you're lucky, he'll destroy it and you'll get to charge on your turn. With some proper dooming and a little luck, you'll take out a fair amount of Death Company, worth much more than your investment.

Or shoot at him with anything AP2 or S8, he won't get his FNP that way (ie, brightlances and star cannons will do horrible, unspeakable things to him). The Avatar would also be pretty scary too (although you wouldn't want to use him without adequate support, otherwise he'll get beaten by shear numbers).

Really, Death Company aren't too hard to deal with, especially if the opposition is nothing but Death Company. If they had some decent support, then you'd have reason to be scared, but as it is, you should have more than enough tools to table him.

But really, I can't stress how important it is to keep your units as far away as possible from your intended anvil. Rage only means the closest model in the unit has to end up closer to the closest enemy model, he can move the rest of the unit freely, and choose to charge whatever he wants. Which means that he can easily slingshot his entire army across the table with proper placement. I do it all the time with Lemartes, and it helps me clean up entire tables. Basically, for every Death Company still alive in the unit, you need to keep your main force 3" away from your anvils. Otherwise he can abuse unit coherency to get in assault range with your meatier support.

As has been mentioned before,

a Farseer with doom and a squad of banshees will hit him really hard. Initiative 10 power weapons with re rolls to wound will tear into his expensive FnP MEQ something fierce.

Since hes claiming his army is "unbeatable" you can take 2 banshee squads and really show him just how untrue that is... 2 banshee squads should easily curbstomp an all DC list. Just make sure they have wave serpents- so that they force his DC to try to pop it, whether they succeed or fail, the banshees can hop out and charge .

The usual eldar suspects also work well. Anything in a Wave Serpent can move faster than his DC, if he lures one into a corner, you can still turbo boost, and if you move more than 6 inches he'll require 6s to hit. So while he may give up very few kill points, he'll still have trouble taking them from you. Eldar missile Launchers on each of your serpents gives you a solid all comer's gun for plugging away at his marines. Star cannons if you really want to tailor against him (although in no other situation should you EVER take Star cannons)

Fire Prisms can lay out their large blast s6 ap3 blast onto those marines from HUGE range. He'll still get his 4+ FnP, or you can pile on 2 s9 ap2 shots, if he foolishy bunches them.

Basically take the standard mech eldar list. You can play hard to get with Kill Points too. If hes really arrogant, load up on star cannons and banshees. Make sure your target is doomed, and watch the girls slice up those expensive marines with power weapons

since he has to go towards the nearest enemy... you should probably just put a closer unit to him to lead him away for 6 turns while you win the game.

It's worth noting that with jump packs equipped, each DC is worth more than two banshees. A full squad on the charge against a doomed target is likely to kill around 8 Death Company. Even if that squad gets eaten by the DC when they attack, or by the second unit after that, they'll still have made more than their points back easily.

Really, without Lemartes, there's not much for you to be scared of. But if he knows how to slingshot, watch out. Most people never see it coming until it's too late (since most people don't actually know how the Rage USR works).

frgsinwntr wrote:since he has to go towards the nearest enemy... you should probably just put a closer unit to him to lead him away for 6 turns while you win the game.

As I've said, that's not gauranteed to work if he's good unless you keep that wave serpent very far away from your main force. It's a common misconception that you have to move every model of the unit of Death Company towards the closest enemy model, when you only have to move the closest model in the unit. With 13 man squads, he could easily target any unit in his normal movement range.

If we're talking this ridiculous level of list tailoring (bringing 3 KP, none of which can score in a "normal" game, to a known KP mission), why don't you just load up on AP2 and Missile Launchers and lulz as you faceroll his whole army?

Remember that DC have Rage, and Astorath will either suffer the same joined to their squad or be off by himself and vulnerable to getting shot.

I wouldn't even bother meeting him in close combat. Nine war walkers with whatever that AP2 gun is (Star cannons?) or Eldar Missile Launchers plus a pile of Fire Dragons in Serpents. Just keep an empty transport moving 12" as the closest thing to his army and shoot him to bits for the first four turns.

Then, on T5, when the only thing left on the table is Astorath and a single thunder hammer, roll up and unload 15 fire dragons and do them 'executioner style'.

Everytime I see someone say something like, "Unbeatable list" it makes me laugh.

Eh, some people like playing tourney hammer, some people like to play basement hammer. An all comers list looks a lot different when you only have one or two regular opponents.

notabot187 wrote:Eh, some people like playing tourney hammer, some people like to play basement hammer. An all comers list looks a lot different when you only have one or two regular opponents.

Nah that just means one needs more experiance to build an "All-Comers", it's the art of not caring what's in their list while understanding what one needs from your book.

all Deathcompany lists are really weak.

they rely on tabling the enemy to actually win games(they can win KP games, but thats only 1/3 of the possable missions)



if you roll up a objective mission, you win. just lead him around the table and keep a squad of Dire Avengers in a Waveserpent alive. turn 5, just turboboost onto an objective. if the game ends, you win. if it continues, boost onto a different objective if he's a little too close. or just sit on it till the game ends.

I would go for 2 easy troops of jet-bikes. 66 points each, turbo boost away constantly until you are sure you can win. If possible you can try early to bate the two units of DC apart so you can attack one then the other.

With the remaining points I would take as many Banshees as possible.

You could also field a unit of harlequins, their base save is not as good, but the invulnerable would help against the rending and the thunder-hammers. You can also bate him into attacking them but stringing them towards the DC. He Charges, only gets a few models in combat, you hit and run then in your turn furious charge him back. Still maybe banshees are a better idea.

If you want to shoot him I would go for fire prisms. 13 DC probably wont avoid a small blast even on a miss.

Hologram wrote:I'm a bit scared. I'm going to be playing my buddy tonight in a kill point game, my Eldar vs his Blood Angels. He claims to have an unbeatable Kill Point Army for our point level.

I've noticed he bought a few new models last week and has been furiously getting them table ready...if my research on his units are correct, he's going to field this against me:

Astorath the Grim
13 Death Company
13 Death Company
And then the rest of the points are enough Thunder Hammers to block out the sun.


Am I really going to be facing an unbeatable foe? What sort of tactics, if any, could I use to pull out a win in this situation?

Well, this is a horrible, horrible list at 1250pts. He has zero control of his army and only 27 models. Mech up and run circles around him, and make sure to focus on Str 8+ or AP 2 shooting to deny his FnP save. Make sure to take the eldar extra armor (forget the name), so you dont get caught in combat if you get stunned.

Shining spears might work too, but I am not speaking from experiance.

You should tell your buddy to actually build a real 1250pt list though. That is comically bad.

And to the people saying he can default on objectives - he can't. They are only playing annhialation, and his buddy only has 3 KP to give up.

The one thing about the death company list is I think it is going to get a lot better with the new objective format Adepticon (and I'm assuming most of the other big tournaments) is switching to.

You get three objectives each misison. The person who achieves the most objectives wins. So if the objectives are kill points, quarters, and objective markers just deny the enemy the two objective based objectives (that's a mouth full) and play for a 1-0 win. And from the tournaments I have been to where they are practicing this format roughly 3/4 games have kill points as one of the objectives. So a death company army could win 3 of 4 games with out needing to table the enemy. Even if you tied that last one going 3-0-1 puts most armies in strong contention for winning a tournament.

Death Company still don't have control of their units, making them tactically inflexable to say the least.

The idea of 9 War Walkers with dual star-cannons is scary. It would be insanely expensive but against a list that has not long range shooting it would be very good. No save and no FNP = a bad day for death company.

Fire prism is gold too.

scubasteve04 wrote:
And to the people saying he can default on objectives - he can't. They are only playing annhialation, and his buddy only has 3 KP to give up.

It doesnt matter how many KP you give up if you table him.

Exergy wrote:
If you want to shoot him I would go for fire prisms. 13 DC probably wont avoid a small blast even on a miss.

Why? Just because he has to move to the nearest enemy unit doesn't mean he has to bunch them up. You can keep the entire unit at maximum coherency just like anything else.

scubasteve04 wrote:Death Company still don't have control of their units, making them tactically inflexable to say the least.

You're really overestimating the impact of rage. All it means is that the model in the unit closest to the closest enemy unit must move as close as possible to that unit. The rest of the DC in the unit can move however they want, so long as the unit remains in coherency. Sure, that's not complete control, but it's a lot more control than you give them credit for. I'm not saying that an all DC army is a good choice, but if you underestimate them like that, against a good opponent you will take loses because of it.

80 Farsser - Doom

160 10 Banshees
125 Wave serpent - TL-Starcannons

60 5 Dire avengers
125 Wave serpent - TL-Starcannons

60 5 Dire avengers
125 Wave serpent - TL-Starcannons

240 3 War Walkers - Starcannons

240 3 War Walkers - Starcannons

1215

Given all the feedback on this thread, this list would take him apart. I would prefer the Starcannons over the EML in this instance. All those Starcannons should give you, on average, 16.5 hits and 16 wounds (With doom). If hes in cover the entire time, hes off the board by turn 4. Thats just with shooting, not even considering the banshees getting stuck in.

Yeah, he's gone, and with points to spare.

Considering how hard it can be at times to keep DC in cover, I say he'll be gone by turn 2 if you play your cards right.

you can use your units to draw him out of cover.


you could even force dangarous terrain tests as he HAS to move as fast as possable and that means using his jump packs.

of course he could get around that by not having jump packs, but then he's even worse off.

I wouldn't rely on dangers terrain too much. Once again, only the closest model is forced to move in such a way. So long as the rest of the unit remains in coherency, he can move them however he wants. He could just move everyone else around the terrain.

So only try that trick on large pieces of terrain, it's not really worth it otherwise.

Or take a night spinner for giggles.
I love that thing.

If hes not using jump packs then it can buy you antoher turn.

I think you should just borrow and ork friends army for a while.
Gazgull and a warboss with 2 squads of meganobs sounds like it would be fun. Just sit there and wait for him to arrive with a can of woop--- in your hand

you cant hold objectives

Hologram wrote:I'm a bit scared. I'm going to be playing my buddy tonight in a kill point game, my Eldar vs his Blood Angels. He claims to have an unbeatable Kill Point Army for our point level.

I've noticed he bought a few new models last week and has been furiously getting them table ready...if my research on his units are correct, he's going to field this against me:

When he shows up for the game, open the rulebook to page 86, "Organizing a Battle".

Note that choose a point size and select forces is step 1. Set up the table is step 2. Select a mission is step 3.

So, since you both have armies, go ahead and set up the table. Then randomly roll a mission and deployment. You have a 2/3 chance of getting a mission involving objectives. If you do so, try not to laugh too hard or too loudly in his face.

In the event that you DO play Annihilation, follow the advice given earlier in the thread. Lead his jump-packers into a corner by using Fast Skimmers to force him to move away from your army. Focus all your firepower, at much of it AP2 as possible, on one unit at a time. You should win 1KP to 0, or possibly more if you roll lucky and he rolls badly.

Part of the balance of the game, and units like Death Company in particular (and Lone Wolves, for Space Wolves), is that armies are selected before the mission is known. This forces players to be careful in selecting forces, not loading up on units which are only good in one mission type. Or, if they do, it forces them to fight at a severe disadvantage when they don't get that mission type.

Take two winged nurgle daemon princes and two units of 17 plague marines each with twin plagmaguns and fistychamps with combi plas and laugh as he hits your line and your plagues hold them there for all eternity(well, as long as 34 fearless T4(5) fnp meq with defensive grenades and a pair of powerfists can hold on) before your princes countercharge and beat face? Downside being of course you have one more KP than he does, but more bodies on the board and half of your KP are the amazing eternal warrior MCs that move as jump infantry that princes are.

In all seriousness though, I routinely play "basement games" with friends using pre-arranged tailored lists and scenarios. The Battle Missions book is amazing for that actually and it can offer unique challenges.
Telling someone to force their opponent to roll on the standard mission chart when they've obviously got a preset arranged battle is silly IMO. Part of the challenge is that knowing the list and mission ahead of time, you can optimally tailor your own list to match, which really puts both players on more or less even footing.