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Ok, so here's my problem. My friend fields an army of both renegade guard and Chaos whenever I play him and I have a 0% success rate against his army. In apocalypse, it normally consists of:
Angron, accompianed by 3 bloodthirsters, many, many, many chaos terminators all equipped with combi meltas which are deep striked in right behind my vehicles, a thunderhawk gunship, a baneblade, a stormlord, about 200 veteran guardsmen lead by creed, psyker battle squad, at least 50 rough riders, 3 or 4 hydra flak tanks, 3 manticore rocket launchers (platforms not tanks), Gunnery Sergeant Harker, 5 or so chaos sorcerers, several chimeras, a squad of obliterators, 2 marauder bombers and a thunderbolt fighter.

Against this I usually have a force of Dark Eldar, Eldar and on occasion an Ork Stompa. I have recently phased out using my Eldar in exchange for Grey Knights (yes I know, against the allies matrix on both counts) but still there seems to be no noticeable difference in the result of the game.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, it really is getting to the point where I wonder why I even bothered deploying my stuff as I have to put it away again so quickly.

If you have no fun with it, why play him?

That being said, he is very shooty (IG) and very hard (daemons, termies). It is a powerful combination, while both eldar and dark eldar are fragile. Hence, you are at a disadvantage. So, try to modify the conditions of engagement to your advantage.

Eldar/dark eldar have speed on their side. So, make the terrain very heavy, and your skimmers may find more blocked LOS, so they can snipe at just parts of the army. Also, the heavier terrain will make it much more dangerous for his terminators to DS.

Another thing to think about is trying to separate his army based on range and speed. He has bloodthirsters (winged?) and rough riders, which are fast on their own. He has terminators that DS, but after that are rather slow. The rest of it is mostly stationary and shooty. So, what I would try to do is start very deep in my side and see where the termies show up. If you do not advance, they have to DS in front of you, giving you cover from the IG and losing the encirclement advantage. You may be able to destroy the termies piecemeal by concentrating fire while hiding from his shooting units behind the ample terrain. Also, my impression of rough riders is negative - your basic troops should be able to shoot them to pieces or the wyches can jump on them from the transports and just kill them.

Once the fast/DS wave is done with, you can regroup to concentrate on specific areas of his line, for local superiority in strength.

The bottom line is, use his disadvantages to your advantage:
- he is slow, you are fast, so outmanover him
- he is not a skimmer, but you are, so make heavy terrain and play cowboys & indians
- he is very shooty and armored, so don't try to outshoot him in a fair fight - hide and concentrate
- he has got lots of termis, but they are slow and eventually roll 1's, while you have lots of anti-troop shots - so hose him down while dancing around him denying CC

Thanks for your help

Reserve your Eldar and hit him in the sides where it will hurt. Use your speed and cunning to your advantage. if you reserve mos of your force he could get ambitious and move stuff out of cover. Then you lightning strike hhim as you come off the table edge.

Angron, accompianed by 3 bloodthirsters, many, many, many chaos terminators all equipped with combi meltas which are deep striked in right behind my vehicles, a thunderhawk gunship, a baneblade, a stormlord, about 200 veteran guardsmen lead by creed, psyker battle squad, at least 50 rough riders, 3 or 4 hydra flak tanks, 3 manticore rocket launchers (platforms not tanks), Gunnery Sergeant Harker, 5 or so chaos sorcerers, several chimeras, a squad of obliterators, 2 marauder bombers and a thunderbolt fighter.

There is nothing you can do about this. Everything is lost. Leave the planet and seek a refuge where you're save.

Have you thought about tallying points? Yes, Apoc your supposed to use all your crap... but if hes got 8k and you've got 5k points, your gonna lose lol

In reply to Zid, yes I'm sure that we have equal points. He may beat me the whole time but he never cheats. Also, my actual total of all of my armys is around 15k, so we never end up using all of our stuff.

Kirjava wrote:In reply to Zid, yes I'm sure that we have equal points. He may beat me the whole time but he never cheats. Also, my actual total of all of my armys is around 15k, so we never end up using all of our stuff.

Just curious, I saw all the super heavies and it just seemed like a lot...

Anywho, run a crapload of dark lances. You'll win!

Phantom Titan, Revenant Titan. = ground units DONE. also, utilize elder aircraft to shoot his down. Elder win the air war. Finally use flank march to show up behind him with something like 60 wych and 20 incubi +lords etc, to chop his gunline into bits.if you use GK as well bring your own thunderhawks. Deepstrike pallys, and termies. Plus Orbital bombardment also works against static lines. just some thoughts

@ darthspader- Yeah, my budget doesn't quite stretch to buying both a phantom titan, a revenant titan and a thunderhawk. Although your other points do help, thank you.

Is the board the proper size for an apoc game? The correct size for the board can grow very large in apoc, and a board size too small would be a real disadvantage for de and eldar.

It's hard to give tactical advice for Apocalypse, considering how over the top and unbalanced things are.

I'd use any tricks I had up my sleeve to use Careful Planning and Flank March to get a bunch of poisoned weapons and fire dragons and dark lances all over his monsters and tanks on turn one.

That'll hurt him and keep him busy while you position the rest of your forces to take the objectives or wipe him out.

Monster Rain wrote:It's hard to give tactical advice for Apocalypse, considering how over the top and unbalanced things are.

I agree. Apocolypse is pretty much a whoever brought more str D weapons WINS! scenario.

wich is why i like the eldar titans. fast, and a good amount of Str: DONE weapons. look at a unit and it just goes away. easy peasy

I should have mentioned- All of the Daemons and Terminators and monsters start the game in reserve. This is what I have the most trouble dealing with- Everything comes down next to me on turn one (they have careful planning). @schadenfreude yes the board is definately big enough, however the simple fact that he comes down right in front of me and knocks out my transports locks me into a far smaller part of the board. @monster rain, I'll give that a go, that sounds like it could work nicely.

If you are using GK use GKSS lots of them and cast There anti deepstrike everiwhere the turn before they come down. Put Corteaz in the most ungodly shooting unit you can come up with (10 firedragons maybe or a large squad of wraithguard.). and make it so that the only place he can deepstrike w/o mishap is by him. Or when he mishaps and you get to place put them by Coteaz.
YOU WILL GET TO SHOOT AT EVERY SINGLE UNIT THAT DS WITIN 12"

That will teach him to be a cheesy git.

Hey rain is that you the California Kid?

You are playing apocalypse. 2 autarchs and reserve your army. Deepstriking warp spiders should put the pain on those hydra flack tanks.

Using speed, you should put him at a disadvantage after he is done with his deep strikes.

Kirjava wrote:I should have mentioned- All of the Daemons and Terminators and monsters start the game in reserve. This is what I have the most trouble dealing with- Everything comes down next to me on turn one (they have careful planning).

You could always keep your stuff in reserve and deny him that. Then when you come in you can be close to what you want to be close to and far from what you don't. Snickerdoodle's advice was excellent as well.

Snickerdoodle- You absolute genuis.

Snickerdoodle wrote:If you are using GK use GKSS lots of them and cast There anti deepstrike everiwhere the turn before they come down. Put Corteaz in the most ungodly shooting unit you can come up with (10 firedragons maybe or a large squad of wraithguard.). and make it so that the only place he can deepstrike w/o mishap is by him. Or when he mishaps and you get to place put them by Coteaz.
YOU WILL GET TO SHOOT AT EVERY SINGLE UNIT THAT DS WITIN 12"

After their initial charge, rough riders are just faster infantry, goade him into wasting the charge then hit the riders before they can't get away. For everything else, the suggestions above should do the trick nicely.

Snickerdoodle your tactic was awesome, however was counteracted by me getting a turbo laser to the face of that unit (despite me being in 3+ cover). It did however serve the purpose of detering the terminators to the other side of the board, resulting in the main objective in the middle being held by mainly my forces. However, my main problem now is the 6 terminators behind my home objectives, however I'm confident I can deal with them. My main problem is that my Stompa is stuck on 1 structure point and is immobolised, and the enemy have pretty much run out of anti- tank, meaning I can't use replacements asset on it until it dies.

Any ideas on the toughest DE unit that can weather a str D large blast for around 300 points?