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This is a tactic I posted yesterday on a thread in general discussion. I have been using it for 15 games in a row now and will be taking it to my first tournament as GK on Saturday. While it has been very successful for me, I've only lost 3 games using it so far, I have only played against 6 opponents. As there will be 1850 and 2000 point tournaments in the near future, as well as 'ard boyz in the summer, I want to know if it can stand up to a wider variety of lists than what I have faced.

The core list:

Coteaz

Librarian: shrouding, sanctuary, quick silver, might of titan (+servo skulls if points allow)

5 paladins: 2 mastercrafted psycannons, 1 daemonhammer, 2 force swords, 2 falchions

6 squads of henchmen: chimera w/ multilaser and heavy flamer, 3 meltagun acolytes

venerable dreadnought: 2 TL autocannons, psybolt ammo

currently I also run 2 full squads of interceptors with psycannons, hammers and psybolt ammo as well, but the other parts of the list vary greatly. Other add ons include more dreads, vindicare and even a stormraven full of purifiers once (very very fun but expensive and risky).

The Tactic:

Set chimeras up in a reverse V facing the enemy with the dread at the back, forming a triangle. Inside the triangle place the librarian at the center and spread the paladins out around him and between the spaces of tanks. Each unit needs to be within 6" of the librarian, but otherwise should spread out as much as possible. Alternatively, set the tanks up in a reverse U formation, forming a box around the paladins, if terrain set up requires it.

Each turn, move the phalanx forward 6", turn the lead tank(s) side on towards the enemy, and pop smoke on it. Librarian casts shrouding and sanctuary as needed during opponent's turn. Each following turn, alternate the lead tank with a new one, to get new smoke cover. If threatened from a side or rear angle, simply pop smoke on whichever flank requires it, but try to limit doing so with too many tanks at once, in order to save cover for future turns.

This phalanx should have 3+ cover even out in the open with no terrain (provided you pop smoke and position in an intelligent manner), the best psychic defense in the game (-4 leadership test from dreadnought's reinforced aegis on everyone and a leadership test against the librarian after that), deep strike defense in the form of Coteaz's "I've been expecting you", and assault defense in the form of sanctuary from either coteaz or the librarian.

Offensive power comes in the form of 97% accuracy double autocannons on the dread, 18 meltaguns, 6 multilasers/heavy flamers as well as 2 mastercrafted psycannons, holocaust and assault power from the paladins. On the outer flanks, I usually operate a vindicare and/or 2 10 man interceptor squads with double psycannon, double hammer and psybolt ammo, allowing them to combat squad and threaten a greater number of targets.

Q and A:

Why chimeras? I take chimeras over rhinos or razorbacks because they offer the best mix of offensive and defensive power. The other tanks offer increased durability for lower cost but trade for firepower. With shrouding, my tanks don't need more durability, so I choose increased firepower instead. Also, chimeras are noticeably larger tanks, meaning I can cover more area with each vehicle, a real bonus for what I do with them.

Why henchmen? I would actually be willing to run strike squads or purifiers in rhinos/razorbacks if I thought they were better. But repeat games leads me to believe that this combo works best with meltagun henchmen in chimeras, given that they will out shoot other GK units at a much lower cost. Every tank offers a multilaser or heavy flamer and 3 meltaguns, which is a threat I don't think strikes or purifiers can compete with and still be cheap.

Why paladins? More wounds in in a smaller unit, holocaust, 2 psycannons per 5 and I can mastercraft any weapon I want. 2 mastercrafted relentless psycannons is nothing to laugh at, I can tell you.

What have I fought? Mechvet IG, horde IG, razorspam SW, razorspam BA, DOA BA, Battlewagon/Trukk Orks, Vulkan drop pod SM and Lash Prince/Obilt Chaos.

What have I lost against? Razorspam SW twice, first due to not being able to cast shrouding for 3 turns in a row, and the 2nd due to my opponent turtling and my misjudgment of when to pop smoke. DOA blood angels once in a capture and control game, due to very smart drops by my opponent, which forced me to split my army and come at him, rather than the other way around.

Now the reason I'm posting this is for criticism and comments. As I said, I've played 6 opponents with this list, 1 of which actually tailored their list against me and still lost (IG with double manticore and hydras). As I am ready for tournaments with this list, I want to know what dakka players with experience think of it, and what you would do to take it down. Feel free to post hard counters if you think they will work, but remember that I am playing TAC lists that probably don't know I'm coming. If you can beat this with a TAC list you know works, and how you would do it, I would greatly appreciate hearing it.

It's cool that you have a winning mentality but how far can you realistically expect to go with just one tactic? It doesn't seem very flexible to me.

1. I see you probably auto-losing to a decent Necron army. The oldest and least competitive codex in 40k. Your psycannons don't rend, your meltas don't 2d6...you literally have no offensive power except for daemonhammers. In close combat.

2. Have you played against a DE army yet? If you tactic is a V or U formation and popping smoke on flanks - I see you having to pop smoke on your entire army on the first turn against flank threats that move faster than you, shoot further than you, and can threaten both flanks at the same time.

Nuff said for me.

I do not really think that the Chimera has better firepower than a razorback, you just have more choice.

Chimera is 55 pts
Razor with Heavy Bolter and Psybolt ammo is 50 pts


Chimera can move 6" and you get 3 BS3 S6 AP6 Shots at 36"


A Razorback can move 6" and you get 3 BS4 TL S6 AP4 shots at 36"


the advantage of the chimera is the ability to carry terminators, the firepoints, and the front AV.

the razorback is slightly cheaper and does a lot more damage at range. You do lose the Heavy Flamer.


Either one is a good choice.

Just curious, what do you do when an IG player drops 2-6 Manticore shots from indirect fire into the midst of your formation? 3+ becomes No+ as cover no longer applies and your vehicles are getting penned 2d6-pick-the-highest on 1+ for the Chims or 3+ for the Dreads?

Looks to me like competitive lists can either circumvent your cover save through IF or flank shots or close into CC to wreck you at short range.

Do you really only have 18 scoring IG troop bodies in your lists?

sourclams wrote:Just curious, what do you do when an IG player drops 2-6 Manticore shots from indirect fire into the midst of your formation? 3+ becomes No+ as cover no longer applies and your vehicles are getting penned 2d6-pick-the-highest on 1+ for the Chims or 3+ for the Dreads?

Smoke saves still apply, and Shrouding would grant a 6+ cover save. Still aren't good odds though.

So, no one seems to think this will work eh?

To address a couple of points:

1) 18 guardsmen for my scoring units: They have the same effective firepower of mechvet IG at 2/3rds of the cost and their tanks are far more survivable thanks to shrouding. My tanks last longer than normal IG chimeras will and a unit of guardsmen outside of their transport is as good as lost anyways. As IG, there were very few games when I could keep a unit of veterans alive and on the board for more than 1 turn after their ride blew up. And more interestingly, its far easier to hide 3 small models than 10. If the tank is wrecked, I can use it as cover for my tiny unit and the enemy may not even be able to shoot at them.

2) Manticores: You need to read the rules carefully on how this works. Basically, I still get to count smoke cover from indirect barrage weapons, which means I still get a 3+ cover save thanks to shrouding. Because my paladins have terminator armor, cover is a moot point against AP4 anyways. You could get lucky and kill some paladins with this, but it hasn't happened yet and I have faced manticores and won 3 times in a row now.

3) DashofPepper: Every GK thread you comment on looks identical, "Monoliths = GK lose". You really seem to believe that we have no answer to these because apparently no one has ever made it into close combat against a monolith before. My list currently includes 2 full units of interceptors with 2 hammers (1 mastercrafted), 2 psycannons and psybolt ammo. Thats up to 4 units with strength 10 hammers as close to the monolith as I want them to be thanks to deep strike, jump and shunt. According to your record and boasts, there are no necron players better than you, and I doubt someone of lesser skill could win the game on monoliths alone. The rest of the army is incredibly weak and I doubt you can hide all of it from me.

4) Raiderspam DE: out of everything mentioned so far, this is the only one that actually concerns me. DE have an ability to race in, shoot from long range and then run away that will present serious problems for me. This is the one case (thus far) that I would consider playing the army differently, as I would need to get the paladins and interceptors into the enemy's face as quickly as possible while using the chimeras as a multilaser wall from the other end. Having said that, in a straight shooting match I would pick my army over DE, as every unit can threaten your vehicles and infantry equally, and my cover saves beat yours.

It looks like a decent enough list vs tyranids as well. Scatter laser and flamers vs horde and you can keep feeding khimeras and melta shots to the MC's.

I do not know vs DE, but the dreadnought and the 6 scatter lasers ought to help in that department.

OP:

Most of my posts in GK threads look the same because most GK armies suffer from the same problems, and require the same comments. Any army without reliable long range anti-tank that can deal with anything, or massive close combat potential...has issues.

As for jump/shunt - you can't assault after shunting, right? So....you're going to present your only threats to Monoliths up close and readily available for the entire army to kill? I wouldn't rely on scout-shunting, that idea has been pretty well shut down by the rules and previous discussions (you know, the part about "making a normal movement" including 6" and 12" infantry movements, combat, cruising and flat out speeds for vehicles.....and most definitely not shunting, which by definition is not a normal movement."

Whether you heed the advice or not is not my concern, I'm trying to help you by making you aware of a weakness in your army. Which you asked for. When your answer is, "LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU"....followed by...well, I'm not going to dig in with you.

I don't scout shunt because, regardless of rules interpretations, I can't. There is no Grand Master in the list. You'd be surprised what you can accomplish with just deep striking, jump movement and a once a game 30" shunt. Although maybe you wouldn't seeing as you play DE on a regular basis and know the importance of speed.

I am heeding your advice, because as I said, DE raiderspam is what I fear most. which you pointed out. But I just don't believe necrons are even half as scary as you make them out to be. You may be undefeated with them but when was the last time you used that army in a tournament? I don't doubt you are that good, I doubt necrons in general are.

While I'm trying to make the point that GK with just hammers can deal with monoliths, the only time I ever cared to try was as Tau when I first started playing 40k. Tau have a clean and simple answer to monoliths in the form of railgun spam, and every other game I have played against them (admittedly not much since back then), I preferred to ignore them for easier phase out targets.

I haven't seen you post any battle reports recently and I would love to know what you do with the rest of your necron army while the monoliths are rampaging across the board. You can't hide them in reserve forever and even a back corner of the board isn't safe for the entire game, as you would be well aware. Unit for unit, necrons simply don't stack up against modern armies, so you must have a hell of a trick for keeping them alive and killing the enemy that I've simply never seen before.

Short story: The more you sell up the awesomeness of monoliths, the more I want to ignore them and kill the rest of your army instead. How do you keep that from happening?

18 geq can often be enough to win games at a flgs, but they will have serious problems getting a major victory and/or massacre at a tournament. Winning by 1 objective=minor victory which is little better than a tie. A major victory or massacre will often require both objectives in a 2 objective game, or 4/5 in a 5 objective game. I just don't see 18 geq holding 4 or 5 objectives for a massacre, and the current trend is to limit a victory to a major if the winning side tables his opponent but can't hold 4 objectives if the rest of the game is played out without an opponent..

Im not sure i understand why the interceptors can not shunt during there scout move, could you break it down for me and or direct me to the threads?

BRB
Scouts are used to reconnoitre ahead and are always in
the vanguard of the army. To represent this, after both
sides have deployed (including infiltrators), but before
the first player begins his first turn, any scouts may
make a normal move. This is done exactly as in their
Movement phase, except that during this move, scouts
must remain more than 12" away from any enemy.
If both sides have scouts, the players roll-off and the
winner decides who goes first, and then alternate
moving these units.
If a unit with this ability is deployed inside a dedicated
transport vehicle, it confers the scout ability to the
transport too.
This rule also confers a special outflank move to units
of scouts that are kept in reserve (see page 94

GK entry:

may shunt INSTEAD of "moving, next sentence if shunting unit makes a MOVE etc.

CAN NOT ASSAULT but can fire or run counts as having MOVED.

I am missing something obviously ... but RAW on both seem like a shunt is perfectly legal idk help?

Shunt during scout move doesn't really matter because they still have to stay 12" away from any enemy models, so a 30" shunt won't get an interceptor squad much closer than a 12" regular move.. A normal 12" jump should move jump infantry within 18" of the enemy lines. 12" scout move + 12" regular move + 6" assault move=30" assault threat radius on an alpha strike assault.

Bruteboss wrote:

3) DashofPepper: Every GK thread you comment on looks identical, "Monoliths = GK lose". You really seem to believe that we have no answer to these because apparently no one has ever made it into close combat against a monolith before. My list currently includes 2 full units of interceptors with 2 hammers (1 mastercrafted), 2 psycannons and psybolt ammo. Thats up to 4 units with strength 10 hammers as close to the monolith as I want them to be thanks to deep strike, jump and shunt. According to your record and boasts, there are no necron players better than you, and I doubt someone of lesser skill could win the game on monoliths alone. The rest of the army is incredibly weak and I doubt you can hide all of it from me.

Someone hears me. I'll die a happy man. While I dont doubt with any other army dash of pepper would be a BAMF, necrons can only be so good, with a tri-monolist. Just out of interest dash, what happens if for some INSANE reason the FAQ says you can shunt as your scout move? Inescapably dead monoliths is what.

Bruteboss, to try help you improve, I will ask this: What happens when someone assaults this nightmare? Any decent assault units can kill anything there except your paladins, I see bad things happening if they manage a multiassault with TH/SS on your Chimeras.

Necrons with 3 Monos can be a threat. But who fields them these days? Those armies perform not so well in tournament play, mostly stuck at the bottom.
How about mech Eldar with Serpent spam? Serpents will generally have scatterlasers and eventually go for targeting the side armor of the Chimerae.
As an Eldar player I know that it can be frustrating to shoot enemy tanks which eventually get a cover save.
Here your need to move with the reverse U or V through the center to herd the Serpents in one corner unless the Eldar players splits his force.
In this way, you eventually can get your meltas within range.

So far as my experience goes: they don't get assaulted.

While the list I posted in the OP is the "core" of the army, it includes several other parts that I should mention to give a feel for how the whole thing operates. First, 2 full interceptor squads with double psycannon/hammers and psybolt, and for larger games a 2nd dreadnought and more paladins in the squad, sometimes bringing them up to 6-8 and a brotherhood banner. Also the librarian now comes standard with 3 servo skulls, because these things are amazing even when I don't deep strike.

As to assault, out of now 16 games (with a 13 to 3 record), I have been successfully assaulted 4 times. And every SM list I have played against included th/ss terminators. I have not lost the entire paladin unit yet, mind you.

The reason is that powerful cc units that actually threaten tanks and paladins (like terminators do) need to come to me in order to work. So I can do the following to stop them:

1) combat squad interceptors with double hammer in 1 unit and double psycannon in the other. Race them both up as bait and blockades, and charge the transport full of scary dudes with 5 strength 10 hammer attacks. Hammer interceptors get mulched by the dudes inside the now destroyed tank, but I get a free round of shooting from the psycannons behind them. They are typically chased by now irrationally angry enemies, so they make fantastic bait as well. Walking assault terminators ain't scary, fyi.

2) Place servo skulls in good area terrain or ruins so as to disallow pre-game moves against me. Because these things block infiltrate and scout moves within 12", you can really mess a lot of armies up with just this tactic. You aren't going to get your uber assault near me via scout or infiltrate simply because I won't allow it.

3) Castle up the phalanx and use my anti-deep strike and outflanking defenses. Deploy the interceptors on the flanks right beside, and place Coteaz/shooting unit in an aggressive position at the front or side. Remember that his ability works against anyone coming from reserve, not just deep strike (a lot of players forget this), so he can really mess up outflankers as well. I can cover a massive area with terrible things to face for deep strikers, so pretty much no one is willing to risk dropping close.

4) Sanctuary. Both Coteaz and the librarian have it, meaning that should I choose to spread the army out a bit, I can still cover most any unit I need to. This works on the enemy's turn, so no need to worry about going 1st or 2nd, they will still have to face difficult/dangerous terrain should they try to assault. I've killed a lot expensive models this way and stopped assaults cold when they couldn't get close enough thanks to poor movement rolls.

Necrons are an unlikely counter as they are a rare sight on the battlefield.

DOA is a far more common army, and Chimera really struggle against DOA. Psyfleman dreads are not that great against DOA because they will at most score 4 wounds on a power armor unit that still gets it's full armor save. A Psyfelman will average 1 dead marines per turn after armor saves meaning a 135 point model is going to average killing a single 16 point marine per turn. That's really poor going up against an army with a body count of about 50-60 marines. Chimera fair far worse as the marines get full FNP, and Paladins are both slow and avoidable. The melta guns are BS3 and within assault range of assault marines if they shoot at them.

Dark eldar raiders will outmaneuver the Chimera, stay out of melta range, and tear into the side armor of 10. Wytches can tarpit the paladins or multi charge chimera with haywire grenades.

If the weakness of a list are the 2 most recently released codex before it came out there is a serious problem.

I stand by my 1st point that is the largest major issue, you're not playing to win 1st place. The army can consistently win my small margins, but the troops are too fragile to win by a landslide in an objective based game (say 4/5 objectives), and the kill points are too bloated to win by a land slide in a kill point based game. Consistent small victories will at best place you at the upper middle of the pack (say 8th place out of 40 people), or at worse place you in the lower middle part of the pack if a minor loss is mixed in with several minor victories. A series of massacres and major victories are requires to play on tables 1 or 2.

I agree that the troops look overly fragile. How do you guys think it would work with the Paladins replaced with regular (i.e. troop choice) terminators? I know they wouldn't get 2W or FNP any more, but a 2+ armour save / 3+ cover save is still pretty effective, and you can pick up more of them for your points...

Really we keep coming back to the dark eldar, who remain my only fear going into competitive games. Interceptors will likely be my saving grace here and I will need to play them hyper aggressively.

DOA relies on alpha striking at short range in order to win a slugging match. I beat them decisively on that front thanks to my defenses. The way I was beaten by a DOA player was smart deployment spreading out across the board and camping behind ruins and objectives. Forcing me to either spread out and weaken my front or else ignore some part of his army to go for another. He won 3 to 2 on objectives but I killed more of his stuff than he got of mine. I spread my units stupidly in response to great positioning on his part but it's a mistake I won't make again. With smarter movement on my part, I am confident I can win against DOA.

One advantage I have is that my army list does not immediately jump out as using this strategy, so I suspect that many DOA or assault themed armies will try their usual alpha strike tactics, which actually favors me, given how risky it is getting close to my army on early turns. The BA player saw my games before hand and knew what was coming, hence his very smart deployment strategy. Also, the average DE player I have encountered seems to operate with a pack hunter mentality. They rush their raiders in a swarm and aim to shoot/assault everything as fast as they can. That works against them in this situation as the best thing to do against me is stand off and shoot at long range. Again, hopefully I get lucky and they try to play a normal game against me rather than dramatically altering their play style.

Edit in response to Ian: I chose the paladins over terminators for very good reasons. 1) 2 psycannons per 5 guys. 2) master crafting any weapon I want. 3) Smaller footprint on the battlefield while having the same number of wounds and effective fighting power. I need to fit these guys into a very small area between the tanks while keeping them spread out against blast templates. More terminators would simply make that harder to do.

Or replace the librarian with a GM and make the Paladins a scoring unit among the D3 scoring units, but then there is no librarian. 2HQs is a tough choice for GK.

schadenfreude wrote:Or replace the librarian with a GM and make the Paladins a scoring unit among the D3 scoring units, but then there is no librarian. 2HQs is a tough choice for GK.

Never. This list exists because the librarian brings me shrouding. Without him I might as well write up a brand new army as the GM simply does not offer what the library does. There are plenty of GK armies that make good use of the GM, but mine would definitely not be one of them. Also I'm not getting rid of coteaz and the chimera henchmen as they are an integral part of the plan as well. They outperform strike or purifier squads in the role I have assigned them, and Coteaz brings more defensive power to the table than any GK HQ except a 2nd librarian ever could.

It may seem kind of expensive, but what about adding jokaero monkey obliterators? Now you have some lascannons and multimeltas as well.

Your henchmen are to vulnerable to shooting, Tau would shred this list, you have no long range answer to shooting outside some str 8 dreadnoughts. First off lets address that, str 8 is not guaranteed to pen any vehicle. There is a reason that dark eldar bring so so many lances to the dance, because they need to if they want any hope of beating a competitive mech list. Anyone that stops your shroud stops your mobile cover and on and 6 by 4 table i will spread out, study the angles, and I will move to have side armour shots on every vehicle you have. Assualt armies will just eat your troops after they pop the transports. Template happy guard will absolutly love you grouped together as barrage templates hit your rear tanks allowing no cover save and lascannons shred your palladins. Any space elf army would simply run circles around you, and Eldar runes shut down your entire plan. BA armies with armour 13 spam (thats 6 preds or 3 preds and 3 vindis for those whom have never seen it) and flying dreads again eat whatever you have. Tau yes the humble Tau can simply remove cover from whatever they want and kill. Drop pods stop the Corteaz reaction shot because only the pod deepstrikes. The unit it caries enter play simply by exiting a transport, it does not count as deepstriking. Now you could midigate these threats by how you design you TAC list, but every competitive codex has a built in counter that is taken quite commonly during competitive play.

Dashofpepper wrote: I wouldn't rely on scout-shunting, that idea has been pretty well shut down by the rules and previous discussions (you know, the part about "making a normal movement" including 6" and 12" infantry movements, combat, cruising and flat out speeds for vehicles.....and most definitely not shunting, which by definition is not a normal movement."

Shut down as in "I don't think it works, so it doesn't"? Interesting definition there.

Bruteboss wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:Or replace the librarian with a GM and make the Paladins a scoring unit among the D3 scoring units, but then there is no librarian. 2HQs is a tough choice for GK.

Never. This list exists because the librarian brings me shrouding. Without him I might as well write up a brand new army as the GM simply does not offer what the library does. There are plenty of GK armies that make good use of the GM, but mine would definitely not be one of them. Also I'm not getting rid of coteaz and the chimera henchmen as they are an integral part of the plan as well. They outperform strike or purifier squads in the role I have assigned them, and Coteaz brings more defensive power to the table than any GK HQ except a 2nd librarian ever could.

You don't need the librarian, because if your list can't function without shrouding then it can't function against Eldar with runes of warding.

You also don't need a grandmaster, and the loss of the librarian would also cause the loss of a psychic hood.

You do however need more than 18 wounds worth of GEQ to hold objectives, as having troops that fragile really is playing with fire.

My 2 cents if you're going to keep the librarian is drop 1 squad of henchmen from troops to elites as cortez may continue to take 1 squad as an elites choice that uses no force org. Now you have a troops slot open, and you can add a 10 man ss with psybolt and 2 psycannons. Change 1 of the scoring units of henchmen into 12 man warrior squads with 12 bolters. Combat squad the ss into a pair of 5 man squads, and GTA a pair of the chimeras. The pair of 5 man ss can now shoot out Chimera which has 5 fire points. One of the henchmen squads will then need to take the strike squad's rhino, the other henchman squad will be on foot but it's a 12 man unit that can hid in cover. A 12 man GEQ unit hiding in cover is actually reasonably durable. Loss is 3 melta guns, 3 more henchmen go from troops to elites, and one large henchman squad is on foot. Gain is 10 MEQ wounds, a 12 man henchman squad hiding in cover, 8S5 storm bolters, and 2 psycannons. The loss of having 3 henchmen turn into elites really isn't that bad because you know now who's chimera is volunteered to take point, and if you feel you need to move 12" disembark and shoot melta it's easy to pick which henchman squad should be volunteered.

There is a world of difference between 18 wounds of GEQ split into 6 squads of scoring units and 15 GEQ wounds + 10 MEQ wounds split into 7 squads of scoring units.