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Hey guys!
I would like to ask something to improve my awful tactics. Yesterday I played a 1500 points game against a draigowing.
Awful game! I've been tabled while my opponent suffered a total of 1 wound on Draigo, 1 wound on a pallie and a weapon destroyed on a psyfleman.
The list were basically:
DEATHWING
Belial with command squad with narthecium/banner and Heavy flamer/chainfist
3 squads of DW termies with cyclone (TH/SS + some LCs)
1 6 men RW squad with power weapon and 2 meltas
2 Landspeeders with MM e Typhoon ML

DRAIGOWING
Draigo
10 men pallie squad with 2 psycannons, banner and master-crafting for full wound shaenanigans
5 men pallie squad with 2 psycannons and full wound shaenanigans
2 Psyflemen Dreads

We played with 4 objectives Dawn of war (roar... the worst scenario for my DW)

Btw I planned to lure the big squad of pallies in the middle of the field (where 3 objectives were) to charge'em with all my four squad at the same time hoping to survive the initial beating and ID some pallies with my Thunder hammers trying at the same times to kill someone with my multimeltas and CML ( tried to ID em shooting with the Krak missiles)...
In order to do so I went first, choosed to make a deathwing assault with 2 squads and kept belial in reserve to Deepstrike behind him...

The plan was totally ineffective... Not a single wound was done by my CMLs and Landspeeders...
I messed up and Belial deep struck behind the enemy lines but wasn't able to reach assault range...
In the meanwhile very good dice rolls allowed him to wipe out my 3 deathwing squad with SB and Psycannons...
at the end of turn 3 of the 3 deathwing suads only 5 termies were left, the 2 landspeeders were taken down by the psyflemen.
I tried to charge the Big pallie squad with those 5 termies hoping they survived and allowed me to bring the bikes and the belial squad in cc
... Obvoiusly the 5 termies didn't survive...

So what shoul I have done? Probably not deepstriking and deploying my termies all together denying him a good deployment zone would have been a better idea but really... it was a totally uphill battle... he outshooted me and was stronger than me in cc... What should I do the next time? just fold? Or do you some nice tactical advice?
Thanks!

don't deep strike it doesn't work in our favor.

Lose the bikes they have uses espcially against non-assault friendly armies.
Replace them with Autocannon/Lascannon Preds lets see his pallies laugh at that.
if i've done my math correctly (don't have the book in front of me)
you should get 2 preds 4 LC shots a turn will hurt even pallies

One real benefit of the bikes though is that it lets you pull off deep striking with no risk. The difference I guess is between walking up the board with the tanks, or scooting around with the bikes before magically appearing in the right place.

I do not think the list should change... it's not a top tier list but it is quite good ... the bikes sometimes come useful, allowing precise deep strike, bringing 2 meltas and if they survive, can make a last turn contest objective... I appreciate the suggestion but I do not think I have a list-building problem (I want an all comerlist.... I hate when i face lists tooled against mine), but a tactical problem... How to tackle paladins without melta-spam or hordes of models?

So maybe the question for the deathwing is: when to deep strike and when not... What kind of missiles are most effective against certain enamies, what are the effective cc capabilities of DW ?

Honestly, the best way for DW to win this matchup is simple; gang up on the pallies. Frag instead of Krak, meltas, etc. into the pallies. Every failed save is 1 dead termi. Once you've whittled down their numbers, charge em with multiple units. If even a few DW termis live your very likely to take a massive chunk out of the unit.

Do not use Frags.

Deathwing is great against Draigowing. Virtually all attacks instant kill paladins.
Dawn of war is reasonable as your units are relentless, if they can see the enemy.

Sit back and shoot. He has literally two dreads as the only threat beyond 24'', neither could start on the board. You could do with more shootyness but 10 kraks is pretty ok. Especially as 2+ means cover doesn't matter and you have multiple units firing.

Try to make them take as many leadership tests on the squad which doesn't have Draigo but first take out the dreads.

Some, even on here, think DWA is the best thing since sliced bread but it tends not to work. You have given a demo. at why it doesn't work. Learn from this.
Having said that having one squad in reserve, can play mind games with the enemy.

DWA is just fine, it just doesn't work against every list. If you need to focus your forces then it isn't going to do so well, but against most things that a terminators squad can deal with DWA is perfectly valid.

Luco wrote:DWA is just fine, it just doesn't work against every list. If you need to focus your forces then it isn't going to do so well, but against most things that a terminators squad can deal with DWA is perfectly valid.

More often than not it fails.
You land a few units to the enemy with a few off the board. The units off the board could be shooting missiles and actually doing something. Then the limited numbers you can land tend not to be enough to deal with an entire army at rapid fire range. Tactical squads can finish off termies quite nicely, even with having tactical squad charging in afterwards.

Against Tau, for example, then sure you land and you can charge and then you win.

i played lists very similar to yours and his in Feb

Your shooting is the difference, per the above you should have rained so much fire on him that by the time it came to close combat the odds would have shifted more

with all the buffing pallies get in CC with grenades and what not they need to be on their last legs when assault happens so even though they will hurt you will clean them up

having said that when they refuse to roll any 1s then unfortunately you are going to have a bad day

when I played your list I poured 1850 points of firepower into Belial and his 5 man escort and could not kill them, then I got shot to ribbons next turn, there is only so much you can do

Take cyclones, and only cyclones, pump shots into the Paladins and pray he rolls ones.

Assault the remnants.

Well... Probably my horrible luck played a critical part... not a single pallie died in 2 turns with 5 CML and 2 Multi-Meltas... (not able to use meltaguns because 12 is charge range)
But just to make it clear... I don't think DW will ever outshoot Pallies... once they are in side the 24 range the sheer amount of shots will wipe 1 unit a turn...
My learning in this game probably has been: GANG UP! You have to simoultaneously assault the pallies with all your termies ... with 3 attacks each, hitting on 3 wounding on 2/3 rerolling 1s you will have a lot of dead termies before you can swing... I lost because I underestimeted their resilience and I lost time juggling with fancy stuff like ravenwing turbo-boosting and Deep-Striking termies, so I had a fragmented force...
I also noticed that Draigo increase incredibly the survivability of the unit since he will absorb the first instgibbing shot of each unit that fire upon its unit... This is very well known but people tend to forget it ....

MFletch wrote:

Luco wrote:DWA is just fine, it just doesn't work against every list. If you need to focus your forces then it isn't going to do so well, but against most things that a terminators squad can deal with DWA is perfectly valid.

More often than not it fails.
You land a few units to the enemy with a few off the board. The units off the board could be shooting missiles and actually doing something. Then the limited numbers you can land tend not to be enough to deal with an entire army at rapid fire range. Tactical squads can finish off termies quite nicely, even with having tactical squad charging in afterwards.

Against Tau, for example, then sure you land and you can charge and then you win.

Interesting experience, maybe I'm just more cautious in my deployment, but I've never had a unit go off the board. How are you in rapid firing range of his whole army? Are you plunking them right in front of the center of his force? You should be in rapid fire range of one unit, two if he peels more forces off to deal with them which means less fire coming at a second squad, and if he turns his vehicles to face you your own anti-vehicle weaponry now gets to hit side armor and DW are generally resillient enough to survive the round while generally splitting his forces. Tau yes is pretty vulnerable to it, but marines, sisters, and blood angels certainly aren't invulnerable to it either. If shooting is a priority over close combat then yea you keep them back.