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Hey guys! I'm looking for an indepth guideline of how to play against Deathwing. I have a player at my FLGS that plays Deathwing and always flaunts his victories and brags about it every chance he gets.

So he runs all terminators belial and some landspeeders. The terminators usually have a mix of CML and ss and th. Every time you shoot a special weapon low ap at him he takes it on his SS.

I play blood angels. I usually run assault marines, sang preists, a libby, death company, and furioso dreads with talons. The problem is i cant get enough shooting in to take out his terminators before i assault. And after the first round of assault he usually does a lot better than me. Any thoughts? Sorry if this is kind of a nooby dumb thread but this guy is getting on my nerves.

Well you should be able to out maneuver him with ease. If you break his army down, bait him around and pick off smaller unit at a time. If it comes to a KP game, take out a couple of LS and then run around the board and avoid him. But as far a dealing with the Termie units, do multiple assaults. If you can get a Dread, Assault Units, and anything else against one unit you'll slaughter them. Look into your psyhic powers as well, idk know them, but you might find something that will give you the upper edge.

Also, idk if this matters, but think about reserving everything. Since you can DS pretty acurately that can give you good placement from reserve.

Volume of attacks are the bane of terminators. Find a way to get local numerical superiority and concentrate fire to force saves. Each roll of a 1 is a punch to the gut in a termy army. Shouldn't be too difficult if the termies aren't mounted. Also, make sure he is using wound allocation properly and not cheating you on those SS saves.

Combat tactics, followed by a terminator squads inability to make a sweeping advance, followed shortly thereafter by your army throwing in another round of shooting or charging him with multiple units is a beautiful thing to behold. Painful, but less so for you than him, depending on how many sacrificial men you have.

You may also want to invest in some assault terminators of your own, you seem to lack in INV saves.

I would check your codex to see what physic powers your librarian has, I know that the vanilla marines dex has a power that forces models to re-roll successful invul saves.

Mr.Norman wrote:I would check your codex to see what physic powers your librarian has, I know that the vanilla marines dex has a power that forces models to re-roll successful invul saves.

That power is only available to librarians from the vanilla codex, not to Blood Angels.

I think the other guys have said it best, you are going to have to rely on volume of attacks. Assault Squad charges putting out upwards of 30 attacks are probably going to be your best bet, after a full volley of pistol shots of course. You may want to change the dreads for something with more dakka as well, but that is preference and also might change your list into something you don't want.

Make sure you take down those Land Speeders quickly. They are easy to pop and the quickest way to drop a heavy weapon from him.

As some others have said, if he is on foot and you have vehicles, you have the edge on speed.

Consider a Chaplain to go with your DS and to give several of them Power Weapons. Rerolling everything at initiative is sweet.

I know i would get flamed for this one but w/ever,

I would suggest you a DC unit consisting of 10 marines w/out jump packs 8 bolters 1 TH/PF and one PW. Basically all you need to do is place your DC right (using LRC or LRR /SR preferably) than rapid fire (add LRC if neccesery) and than charge. Hopefully you be able to take one unit of 5 down.

Or try that DC unit with Astrorath from a SR, who grants rerolls on invuls...may work at least it does for me...moreover you get rerolls on hit and wound to your DC squad...

The Vanilla codex has a more user friendly solution to deathwing because of null zone.

BA have an equally powerful solution to deathwing, but it's less user friendly. The BA solution is that they have a huge speed advantage over deathwing.

As far as BA go the answer is to isolate squads of termies swarm them. 4 squads of deathwing will squash 4 assault squads in 4 fair fights, but a pair of unfair fights with 2 assault squads against 1 deathwing with the remaining 2 deathwing sitting out will result in the loss of 2 deathwing squads.

An assault squad dishes out 25 attacks per turn without the sergeant. 24 attacks=8 wounds=1.33 dead terminators. BA have speed over DA, so swarm 5 termies with 2 assault squads=2.666 dead termies (without the 2 sergeants) followed by another .87 wounds from the power fists going up against SS, and preceded by 4 melta guns & 16 bolt pistols.

Fast armies such as BA or DE should avoid fair fights at all costs, the reason you purchase speed is so you can jump on an opponent with at least a 2 to 1 point advantage in your favor.

Lots and lots of Plasma Guns?

Anubis_513 wrote:Lots and lots of Plasma Guns?

PG are not the correct weapon of choice. The termies will take the hits on the TH/SS which still has a 2/3 chance of saving.

The solution to killing termies, as has been mentioned, is lots of small attacks. 30 STR 4 hits will kill 2.5 termies on average. That many hits are easy to generate with a assault squad.

As has been mentioned, deathwing armies are slow, and as 2/3 of the games are objective games, that can really hurt them.

some Assault Terminators of your own bolstered by a priest(for the FC, not the FnP) will put the hurt on his expensive squads.

just be careful all those clyclone missiles don't drop your transports and you end up walking.


if you lose combat, combat tactics away and assault after regrouping and take Power weapons where possable. that 3+ can still fail sometimes and its better then a 2+

Think of how many times you have grabbed 6-10 dice to roll to hit something while shooting and you sat back and said "how did I get 3 ones?." Not that big a deal when shooting, but I feel like that happens often enough. Now imagine how it would feel if it was a roll for terminator saves from lasguns.

I personally don't like terminator armies because it seems so dependent on how hot your dice are sometimes.