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Hi everyone.

I played recently against demons, and got mauled. My main issue was that his 10 plaguebearers absorded a ludicrous amount of firepower. Like 14 dire avengers + 2 exarchs using Guide and Bladestorm (48 dices, rerolling to hit), managing to kill only one of them.

I'll fight that player again one day, and I'm thinking about how to deal with that.

I could use shuriken canons and scatter lasers to deal with their T5, but they'd still have the fnp rule, and that's what I had just tried. It ended badly because my war walker squadron got squashed at the begining of turn 2, severely limiting my number of alaivable heavy weapons.

I could use my two fire prisms, but I'd have to use the focus mode to make reliable kills, and when you take into account the disperison and small blast... not so reliable after all... Besides, that's a lots of points to deal with one single target, and there's others things to shoot at, like big demons and soul grinders.

Bright lances... let's forget that.

Banshees... while they have power weapons, they still only have S3, so I figure they'd do badly against plaguebearers.

Fire Dragons... They'd have only one shot before the melee, doesn't seem like a very good idea.

Starcanons... now that would be effective, but that's damn expensive, and a bit situationnal (bad against tanks and light troops). And If I start using a signifiant number of heavy weapon slots for those, I'm going to lack severely in ranged AT firepower.


What would you do to deal with plaguebearers?

The thing with PB's is that they absorb a ton of fire power but they are slow (and purposeful) and generally don't kill a whole lot. I am not sure what kind of list you are running but if you have a fast mech list I would advise to ignore them shoot everything else and simply run circles around the PB's. If you kill off everything else in the army it wont matter that your opponent still has an anvil unit in the middle of the field. PB's have no ranged attack so if you are more than 12" away they cant hurt you.

Ignore them is the right thing to do. They are extremely slow, can't shoot, and are lowsy in CC. The only thing they are good for is holding objectives.

If ignore them until turn 5, then either contest their objective or shoot after the rest of the army has been killed.

Large units with FNP are a real problem for Eldar, but unlike BA Assault Marines or Plague Marines Plaguebearers are pretty much no threat to you as they can't threatenen your vehicles and are incredibly slow. Most Daemon lists only take them as scoring units to drop on safe objectives and camp, so basically they should be the absolute last thing on your target priority list.

If you absolutely have to take them out, then chipping away at them with S6 is probably the easiest thing to do, but obviously it will take a while. You don't want to use any of your infantry against them unless you get them down to 2-3 guys beforehand and can safely eliminate them without getting your infantry killed in return. This is one of the very rare situations where the Starcannon does more damage than the Scatter Laser, but its not worth taking Starcannons just for them (ignoring stuff like maximum potential damage which the Scatter will always win). Actually the quickest way to kill them is to use 1-2 vehicles to Tank Shock them into a ball (you can Tank Shock them all day to keep them off objectives as well) and then drop focused (but not linked, 2 shots will do far more damage) shots from a Prism on them. I use this trick against Marines and its actually safer in this case because they can't hurt you. It is tough to pull off though, firstly because it requires you to have multiple vehicles/units in position to do it, but mostly because unless they are completely isolated there should be other units around which can come and jump on your Serpents (ones which can hurt you badly like Fiends, Crushers or MCs). It can also backfire spectacularly if you get a terrible Scatter as well, which is why its nice if you can Guide the Prism in question (better than linking cause you still get two shots).

Your opponent doesn't by chance play with Epidemius does he? This could really ratchet up the PB's killiness as the nurgle-marked models garner more benefits from successive kills.

You won't be able to get rid of the invulnerable save, and the buffed tougness can also cause issues. You need units either durable enough to absorb any potential hits with minimal damage, or that can run away. My suggestion is wraithguard and/or harlequins. Wraithguard will wound the PB's on a 2+ with shooting and negate FNP. They also are hard enough to be able to withstand any cc hits. I'd also suggest harlequins with kisses. They can charge in and jump out if things get hot; and then charge in again later.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
If ignore them until turn 5, then either contest their objective or shoot after the rest of the army has been killed.

This. They only have one job, and that's to hold an objective. They are also one of the only units in the daemons codex that isn't offensively scary either in shooting or cc against eldar. Hell, if you have a serpent left, you can just tank shock them off an objective ftw.

I feel like mechdar shouldn't ever have to worry about PBs.

Eldanar wrote:Your opponent doesn't by chance play with Epidemius does he? This could really ratchet up the PB's killiness as the nurgle-marked models garner more benefits from successive kills.

Epidemius was there, yes, attached to his PB squad.

It was a 2v2 game with spearhead deployment, me and a dark angel player on a corner, a CSM (with nurggle marines) and demon player on the other. And it was a freaking disaster, with the DA player sending melee troops against the deep-striking demons, blocking lines of sight, and the CSM Defiler being murderously accurate (killed 2 war walkers and stuning the third one turn, then 8+ Dire avengers, then obliterating 5 banshees + 3 fire dragons with another blast).

Well, I learned from it, and next time I won't let myself be boxed that easily, whatever my teammate is doing.

Your fire dragons' massed fusion guns will do them in, if you can't ignore them and really need them to die. Str8 and AP1 means you wound them on 2s and they get *only* an invulnerable or cover save, and nothing else. Guide and doom help.

Use a dragonfish maneuver to discourage them charging your fire dragons.

Buy a nightspinner and template them Wounded when hit, wounded again when they try to move

Overwhelming fire works too. Massed scatterlaser fire from serpents would help, even though they still get saves against it, due to numbers. Bladestorm Avengers might work ok also.

Anything with S6, but don't expect them to fall in a single turn, there tough little blighters(pun intended) i'd only use low AP weapons if there were no better targets to shoot at. You should be able to out run them especially with fleet while they have Slow and purposeful.
I find with daemons you want quantity of shots over quality, because they have invuls, they will always get a save!

Ignore them next time, you can rings around them while chipping away at the unit

Ignore the Plague bearers and kill everything else threatening and then just tank shock the Plague bearers off their objective on what you think is the last turn is probably the best way to deal with them. Not really a point to killing Plague bearers if there other threats on the board and you can just tank shock them off the objective as they aren't a threat to your tanks.

Against high T5 units, Doom is the most important spell to use in this case, especially if you're pouring in fire from other units.

If you want to snuff them out however, Farseer and Harlequin squad will do the job. As long as they're doomed, it actually benefits the Harlequins, since the additional number of re-rolls to wound will increase the eventual number of Rending hits that negate their FNP...