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Ok - I've been building up my Chaos Marines force and having a big battle vs a Grey Knight force. I'm basically concerned about the amount of termies he's bringing, and so looked in my bitz box for melta and plasma I can bring. My force is essentially:

HQ
Daemon Prince w/ Lash
Termie Sorceror w/ Lash

Elite
5 Dual LC Termies
5 Chosen w/ 4 melta
5 Chosen w/ 3 plasma pistol/ 2 melta/ power sword and powerfist

Troops
10 Kh Berserkers, 2 plasma pistol, Rhino
10 Plague Marines, melta, rhino
10 Plague Marines, melta, rhino

Heavy
3 Obliterators
5 Havoks w/ 3 lascannons
Predator with 1 autocannon, 2 lascannons.

His list is basically Stern, Karamazov, lots of termies, landraider, 2 dreadnoughts, some assasins, and some standard grey knight marines. I think his termies all have the +1 attack halberd/wards.

My thinking is to almost play Dark Eldar style, and keep my long range stuff firing as much as possible, while lashing things in and out of range. I suspect I can suicide both my melta squads to take out the landraider and a dreadnought. I think he'll deepstrike some of his terminators, so my answer to that would be to sacrifice something in combat while setting up not a counter charge, but a load of plasma/melta killiness once the combat finishes. When I've played him before I've found my Khorne Beserkers, and even Dual LC Termies get eaten up due to having lower initiative and not enough power weapons. If I can charge a squad of 3 Termies, rather than 5 with my beserkers then they do ok and finish them off.

I think the Daemon Prince and Obliterators will seriously bother him. Am I right in thinking that it should be easy for a Daemon Prince to smash a landraider? 4-5 attacks, S6+26 - shouldn't be too hard? And 3 of the plasma cannon templates on a squad of Termies should just demolist them.

Anything to think about?

Well I don't play chaos or grey knights, but it seems imprudent to bring a daemon and a psyker as your HQ's.

He simply does not have all of the things that you listed him as having. It is literally not possible given the point costs. Stern, two Dreadnoughts, two Assassins, a Land Raider, and 10 Terminators (which isn't lots by anyone's standards) alone come out to more than 1300 points without any wargear.

If you are going to use a sorcerer, get one in regular armor and put him in a rhino where he can use powers safely. However, there's too much Lash there to face most mech armies.

Chosen are usually best left only with guns OR CC weapons. Adding both creates an expensive unit for him to kill. How about replacing them for a trio of terminators with combi-weapons?

Ok brilliant that's really helpful. Yes I think he may be underestimated his army, he hasn't got the full codex yet. I agree with Chosen, I just thought if I infiltrate them, and they end up close enough to plasma pistol some Termies - they may as well run in and assault them as they'll get hit next anyway. And if I give them 1-2 power weapons then they might get to kill a termie or 2? I'll certainly stick the fist in - the model already has it, but maybe leave it after that.

Why do you say "too much lash"? It sounds reallly useful?

the reason for the too much lash is grey knight have a fair amount of psychic hate. you my end up with a lot of perials and they also get bonuses for having psykers in squad they assault. for example they make your pskers I1 for the first round of assault. or they can make you psykers -4 ld if within 12" of a dreadnought

He says too much lash because typical GK is going to be MSU mech and are all an absolute terror to psychic units. GK aren't exactly scared of psychic powers. Psykers and daemons will get messed up vs almost any GK unit, so don't ever expect to assault with those HQ choices of yours unless you're sure they can outright kill their target.

Basically remember that against GK (not henchmen or assassins), your sorcerer and daemon will be striking last in combat, and he will get re-rolls to hit you and possibly NFW ID you before you hit back. Your lash of submission also has a lower than normal chance to work against them, but may still go off.

Other than that your list is good for target saturation and multi threats. Focus fire 1 target at a time and use cc strictly to finish off weakened units and it will do fine.

Oy. Sounds tough. I'd personally spam Obliterators, and take several units of terminators, all of them in Land raiders. Add in some Nurgle Warptime princes, and plague marines and you'd be set. I can't advocate lash princes, to be honest. Unless you plan on just pushing them away from you over and over, they're pretty useless.

Samus_aran115 wrote:Oy. Sounds tough. I'd personally spam Obliterators, and take several units of terminators, all of them in Land raiders. Add in some Nurgle Warptime princes, and plague marines and you'd be set. I can't advocate lash princes, to be honest. Unless you plan on just pushing them away from you over and over, they're pretty useless.

I'd advocate lash before any other power against GK to be honest. Mind you none of them will be amazing, but at least that one will have a noticeable effect when it goes off. Lashing an important unit into your line of fire, or as far away as you can push it, are excellent uses of this power and especially damaging to low model count GK armies. Every unit is expensive and valuable, so every loss from concentrated fire, or another turn not spent assaulting will really affect them.

That warp time prince will never get to use his amazing re-rolls because GK will knock him dead before he gets to swing back. Even a strike squad stands a chance of doing that as well.

Also a note on plague marines: In the shooting phase they will be amazing because GK seriously lack AP1-2 weapons and rely on rending psycannons for most of their heavy work. In CC your stats are no better than CSM with mark of nurgle and probably worse because they cost more. Long story short, don't let these guys ever get into cc and you will prosper.

Thanks for the advice guys! It looks like a tough battle, but essentially I need to be very disciplined, and if I am my greater long range threat (9 lascannon shots a turn) and low AP weaponry should do enough damage to his termies and most important units while leaving most of mine fine. I do feel like he chose the one army which renders some of my more exciting units like the DP redundant. Cheers mate.

I think the plan would be to push units away - I need to be disciplined with my positioning so that if Grey Knight Termies they chew up a unit in combat, I can lash and move units away while firing melta and plasma to whittle the wounds down. I've put his list below - I do think that without his Terminators, or even with the two units down to 3 rather than 5, there's little to be afraid of.

It's a 2500 point game, which means I have about 300 points left in my list. I'm looking at another 10 man standard marine unit which will have 2 plasma guns, no rhino I'm afraid. And then I may even put together more troops, I was thinking some little 5 man suciide squads to provide cover saves to obliterators, or throw at GK termies while I set up a 10 AP1-2 shots for after the combat finishes.

They'd be foot slogging, but I can imagine troops like the Daemon Prince and the Chosen with melta and plasma stood in midfield behind cover which denies Line of Sight. I'll then just wait for the GKs to pass a certain point, while trading longrange fire, which *should* suit me. When they cross that point, I'll use lash to move the more valuable units into a wave of melta and plasma fire. I think my troop placement will be crucial, and I'll probably think more about board control via my lascannons in this game.

This has made me a bit critical of the CSM codex - there's nothing in fast attack that I want to use or have bought... in this game a couple of raptors with special weapons would help, more plasma and melta in 5 man squads. I've got hundreds of marines on sprues, perhaps I can convert some...

His list is:
HQ

1 Grand master HQ (using the Stern figure - GM is better than Stern at about the same point cost)
1 Inquisitor Karamazov (not really that good but looks immense and I love the idea of calling orbital bombardments on my own units - he doesn't have an invulnerable save anymore)

Elites

Eversor assassin
Vindicare assassin
Venerable dreadnought with twin linked lascannon 10 x warrior acolytes (Inquisitor retinue - do not count in the force organisation chart)

Troops

5 x Terminator
5 x Terminator
8 x GK's in power armour
8 x GK's in power armour
8 x GK's in power armour

Heavy support

5 x GK's in power armour (all armed with incinerators) + Razorback (dedicated support) Dreadnought Land Raider

His list doesn't look too hard at all, just remember that his GK are just normal marines in regards to how they die. And so, plasma should take him no probs.

I'd run a list like this personally:

Lash Sorcerer

3 squads of 5 chosen with meltas

4 squads of plague marines with plasmas in rhinos (say 7)
2 squads of beserkers with fists and champs in rhinos

9 oblits

That's about 2500

3 outflanking melta chosen rhino squads should not only take out his landraider and dreads, if any survive they can just melta his termies or perhaps assault his vindicare.

All that plasma from the oblits and the plague marines will melt him in seconds. His list is just sooo small for 2.5k that it should be fine if you ask me. Hit hard, hit fast and make sure you wipe squads out. Use your mad rhino saturation to keep mobile, because if you're right, he's footslogging, and that's always a lovely thing to see when you've got 9 plasma cannons and a lash on your team.

Good luck

His list has gone even more 1-dimensional and now I'm feeling pretty relaxed about facing him. He's over points and now has only 31 actually troops! 2 hq, 31 troops, inc 10 termies, 2 dreadnoughts, razorback, 2 landraiders.

Lining up against that I have 2 hq, 5 termies, approx 50ish marines in variations of melta chosen, berserkers, plague marines, plasma raptors,havok, plus Predator, obliterators.

I have 9 lascannon shots on my first turn - I don't see how he can 'touch' anything with his lr on his first turn and so I'd be pretty confident about lascannoning him. If anything I can let them run into midrange as my Daemon Prince, meltasquads, even my fist raptor should have little problems in charging it. I'll just wait in cover for him to get in that sort of range, which I guess he'll have to as he's putting his termies in those landraiders.

I don't think he has a lot of 72" range, I think maybe 4 lascannons, 2 of which he's getting less use out of as the LRs will be bombing forward. Personally if I were him I'd look at the objectives and see which I could contest safely, defend that, and then look to sweep out late in the game. I'm very excited about the thought of 3 plasma cannon templates landing on a squad of termies, kaboom. Oblits can move 6" and fire - right? I'm hoping they can take out a unit and avoid taking any shots in return.

Kharn will roll with 8 Bezerkers, including 3 plasma pistols and a powerfist champ. This should be enough to f*** up a Termie Squad, certainly if it's down to 4 men, on the charge - with 4 plasma pistol shots and about 13 powerweapon hits on the charge.

I think I have loads of low AP stuff strewn throughout my army - 9 12" on the chosen, 4 plasma pistols on the beserkers, another 6 on the remaining troops and raptor squad, then 8 on the heavy units. That makes 27 shots in total - plus some AP3 bolter on the Emperors's Children. They're basically in their for the Bolt of Chance, but if they get a chance to shoot while at full strength they should come out very well in a matchup with a 6,7 or 8 man GK squad.

HQ

Inquisitor Karamazov 200

Grand master 175

Total = 375

Elites

Vindicare assassin 145

Eversor assassin 130

Venerable dreadnought 175
Twin linked lascannon 30

Total = 480

Troops

5 GK terminator squad 200
1 psycannon 25

5 GK terminator squad 200
1 incinerator 5
4 halberds

8 GK strike squad 160
5 Halberds 25
2 incinerators 20

7 GK strike squad 140
4 Halberds 20
2 incinerators 20

6 GK strike squad 120
1 incinerator 10
4 halberds 20
Razorback 45
Twin linked lascannon 35

Total = 1045

Heavy

Land raider crusader 250

Land raider 255

Dreadnought 115
Assault cannon 10
Psybolt ammunition 5

Total = 635

Army total = 2535

MY LIST

> > HQ
> >
> > Daemon Prince, Wings, Mark Slaanesh (I6) and Lash Kharn Betrayer
> >
> >
> >
> > ELITE
> >
> > 5 Termies, 4 Dual LC, Chainfist, Combi-melta, Mark of Khorne
> >
> > 6 Chosen, 4 melta
> >
> > 5 Chosen, 2 melta, 3 plasma pistol, 2 powerweapons
> >
> >
> >
> > TROOPS
> >
> > 8 Beserskers, Champion, Powerfist, 3 plasma pistol, rhino
> >
> > 7 Plague Marines, 2 x plasma gun, rhino
> >
> > 7 Plague Marines, plasma, rhino
> >
> > 10 Marines autocannon
> >
> > 5 Emperors Children, Doombolt
> >
> >
> >
> > FAST ATTACK
> >
> > 5 Raptors, Champion, Plasma pistol, powerfist, 2 plasma gun
> >
> >
> >
> > HEAVY
> >
> > Predator, Lascannons, Daemonic Possession
> >
> > 5 Havoks, 3 Lascannons
> >
> > 3 Obliterators

his strike squads can't take 2 weapons unless there are ten of them.



it's really a suboptimal GK list.

Its not only suboptimal, its downright terrible. 2 assassins, throne guy without a real job, naked grandmaster, illegal strike squads, lascannon backs in GKs, assault cannon dread (S7 rending is common in GKs, why use a dread for it when you can do better?), LRs delivering strike squads, TLLC on a venerable (when you can do better), strike squads kitted out with halberds (nice I6, how many attacks do you get again?).

Honestly This is worse than my 1750 list where I brought useless stuff just to fill points. I don't think I've ever seen a worse GK list since the spoilers came out.