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Ok DakkaDakka I'm going to a tournament next week where I know there'll be a dude who runs Fateweaver+flamers+screamers (and two DP as if that wasn't bad enough). I ran my GK against him last tournament and got a little lucky in that FW came in second and on turn 3 so I had a chance. Still lost but it was not unreasonably close. It was the first time I went up against fateweaver and that many flamers. This time I'm taking my Necrons. I've been having a lot of luck with my wraiths since the new dex came out so I've started running 3x6 wraith units, two NS, three anni barges, 3x8 warrior units, GA, lord w/orb. I just don't see this being enough shooting to deal with maxed out flamers. I think flyers may be the answer but against every other list out there a heavy flyer list I don't think would be as effective as 18 wraiths in your face...

Well, Wraiths should be able to deal with Flamers thanks to their speed and good inv. save. How many points will the RTT be?

It's a 2k tournie. But a 10 man flamer unit gets a D3 shots with their flamers when assaulted right? That's between 10 - 30 hits. Saying half cause wounds that's 5 - 15 saves I need to take. That's 2.5 - 7.5 wounds or 1-2 wraiths down. I guess it's not horrible and I should probably focus fire with the anni barges in the shooting phase to try and bring the numbers down a bit. Still painful and stupid fateweaver keeps the flamers up longer right?

Wraithwing necrons actually can hold its own against flamer-spam daemons.

I once played against a daemon army with 44 flamers! I brought my 2K wraithwing tesla-spam necron army and let him take 2200pts of daemons as a slight handicap. What I wasn't expecting was for him to spam those flamers! He brought Fateweaver, Bloodthirster, 44 flamers (double-FOC), 2 flying DP's and 4 units of pink horrors. I brought my standard competitive necron list - 2 D-lords, 4x warriors in night scythes, 18 wraiths and 3 annihilation barges. Although I lost almost all my wraiths and both my HQ's, I ended up winning the game.

Anyways, here are my tips to take them down:

1. Focus-fire on the flamers. With the amount of teslas (and gauss) you have, you can do a lot of damage. You don't need to completely wipe out a unit. Just weaken them enough so that your wraiths can charge with minimal damage and tear them up in combat.

2. Your mathhammer is on the money. How much damage you will take from Overwatch by a full unit of flamers? 9 flamers x 1.5 average hits x 1/2 wounds x 1/3 failed saves = 2.25W or 1 dead wraith only. And that's from a full unit. If you focus-fire on them, that should be even less.

3. Disembark your troops if you have to in order to focus-fire down those flamers. However, if you do employ this tactic, make sure to disembark them such that they are protected next turn from enemy retailiation. You want to position them in such a way as to minimalize return fire/assault from enemy units next turn. If you cannot do this, then don't disembark.

4. Sacrifice a unit to Overwatch if you have to. What I would do before was to split off my D-lord from my wraiths before assaulting a full squad of flamers. Charge the D-lord first. He'll probably die, but then I always equip him with a Res-Orb so that he can come back on a 4+. Then the wraiths can safely charge in. But after doing the mathhammer, you don't even need to do this. Just keep your D-lord with the wraiths and use Look Out Sir if you have to.

5. Go after his troops. That is his main weakness. With your scythes, you can actually reach his troops.

6. Split up his forces from Fateweaver. Typical Fateweaver armies tend to stay together to benefit from his buffs. The way to play against them is to force them to split up. That usually means that you would have to split up your forces as well, but with the mobility of your army, that isn't too bad.

I play Daemons and I think Jy2's advice is spot on. Wraiths tend to butcher Flamers and Screamers, especially if you can burn some of them down with shooting before assaulting.

When I play Necrons I try to engage the Wraiths with my Bloodthirster, with Unholy Might I can ID a wraith or two every round of combat if I'm lucky.

Disembark your troops if you have to in order to focus-fire down those flamers. However, if you do employ this tactic, make sure to disembark them such that they are protected next turn from enemy retailiation. You want to position them in such a way as to minimalize return fire/assault from enemy units next turn. If you cannot do this, then don't disembark.

That's tough, since Flamers are fast. This could be an issue. But I agree with the remaining points. Nicely done.

 wuestenfux wrote:

Disembark your troops if you have to in order to focus-fire down those flamers. However, if you do employ this tactic, make sure to disembark them such that they are protected next turn from enemy retailiation. You want to position them in such a way as to minimalize return fire/assault from enemy units next turn. If you cannot do this, then don't disembark.

That's tough, since Flamers are fast. This could be an issue. But I agree with the remaining points. Nicely done.

It's tough, but it can be done because of 3 main reasons:

1. You know how far flamers can move. Try to position your transport (night scythe or ghost ark) about 8"-12" away from them to block them off. Night scythes work best as they cannot be hit/targeted by the flamers. You may lose out on rapid-fire, but if you have wraiths nearby ready to assault, then you can disembark a little closer to rapid-fire.

2. With 18 wraiths, if the daemon player doesn't deal with them (i.e. sic his flamers on them), then it's going to hurt him more in the long run. He needs to deal with those wraiths, especially when you don't need to disembark your troops if you don't have to.

3. When I say "minimize enemy retaliation", that usually means only disembark your troops if they can finish off the unit (or come close to doing so). Basically, the warriors are only the finishing touch, not the main offense. If you don't think you can finish off a unit with a concerted effort (or reducing it to just 1-2 models left), then don't risk disembarking them. You can also disembark them if you have a wraith unit nearby to assault them afterwards.

Remember, disembarking your troops for a little extra offense is a viable tactic. However, you need to make the judgement call to see if the risk is worth the rewards. Usually, it is not worth losing the squad just to kill a few extra enemy models. However, if you can do so with minimal risk to your troops, then don't hesitate to do so. The crons got buffed nicely with the ability for their units to get back into the scythes on their next turn.

Wow thanks for the great tips everyone!

What's the down side to focusing on fateweaver himself? I've had a couple of games where my opponent had one dude that buffed the heck out of his army. One is a CSM w/daemon ally tally list. Seems to be the new craze in my club. Once that tally starts pushing 20 things get really bad. In another game one of my opponent's psykers got misfortune which I had never played against. Let's just say rerolling saves on wraiths is really, really bad. I attribute losing that game to that one psyker.

necron99 wrote:
Wow thanks for the great tips everyone!

What's the down side to focusing on fateweaver himself? I've had a couple of games where my opponent had one dude that buffed the heck out of his army. One is a CSM w/daemon ally tally list. Seems to be the new craze in my club. Once that tally starts pushing 20 things get really bad. In another game one of my opponent's psykers got misfortune which I had never played against. Let's just say rerolling saves on wraiths is really, really bad. I attribute losing that game to that one psyker.

I think the downside to focusing on Fateweaver is that it's possible to pour an entire turn of shooting from your entire army into him and do absolutely nothing to him. I've had him take a wound from a Tesla arc (after being grounded) and fail his rerollable 3++ and then leave the game after failing his morale test. I've also had him take an entire turn of shooting from 6 autocannon Dreadnaughts, 6 rhinos with TL heavy bolters and 6 henchman squads and take not a single wound. And even if you do manage to take him out early, you've still got all the other threats to deal with after Fateweaver soaked up a disproportionate amount of shooting.

I would also recommend a lot of Tesla weapons. AP means nothing to deamons and Tesla can force your opponent to take a lot of saves. The 3+ armor save on Immortals is nice too with a res orb to keep them coming back. Also when firing at FMC's, 1 hit turns into 3 with Tesla weapons making it more likely to score a wound in addition to forcing grounding tests.

3. When I say "minimize enemy retaliation", that usually means only disembark your troops if they can finish off the unit (or come close to doing so). Basically, the warriors are only the finishing touch, not the main offense. If you don't think you can finish off a unit with a concerted effort (or reducing it to just 1-2 models left), then don't risk disembarking them. You can also disembark them if you have a wraith unit nearby to assault them afterwards.

Minimum enemy retaliation should be achieved here. But still, Flamers are fast and with their templates they cover a radius of 20''.

I got a little excited when I saw this thread because I have had serious problems with this type of list.
Sadly it would seem the only good solution is lots of wraith, which I dont tend to use.

Anybody got any good ideas for coping with this in a more balanced/shooty list?

Usually Fateweaver lands right in front of my army and 3 x 9 screamers DS at a safe distance then turbo boost next to him for a 4+ rerolled save.
The screamers just dont die and if I take out FW the screamers get to assault at full strength.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Moosatronic Warrior wrote:
I got a little excited when I saw this thread because I have had serious problems with this type of list.
Sadly it would seem the only good solution is lots of wraith, which I dont tend to use.

Anybody got any good ideas for coping with this in a more balanced/shooty list?

Usually Fateweaver lands right in front of my army and 3 x 9 screamers DS at a safe distance then turbo boost next to him for a 4+ rerolled save.
The screamers just dont die and if I take out FW the screamers get to assault at full strength.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

So at the end, this is a quite nasty list. In fact, the first target should be FW. But Tzeentch Daemons are tough to deal with. Tying them up in a melee is an option but in this edition is rather hard to pull off a charge.

i thought the screemers and the flmaers both got 5++ saves now sense they only have the deamon rule, and there isent anything in the deamon book about Tzeetch giving the +1 to invl saves in it ,IIRC or am i missinforemed i took some screemers recently as allys and took only 5++ i thought that was to balance them out.

also Necron99,
good luck buddy.

Slipknotzim wrote:
i thought the screemers and the flmaers both got 5++ saves now sense they only have the deamon rule, and there isent anything in the deamon book about Tzeetch giving the +1 to invl saves in it ,IIRC or am i missinforemed i took some screemers recently as allys and took only 5++ i thought that was to balance them out.

also Necron99,
good luck buddy.

You are correct in that Flamers and Screamers have a 5++ now, but not because of the Daemon rule in the BRB. The latest FAQ says that Chaos Daemons only benefit from the Codex rules, but goes on to grant every unit in the codex a 5++.

Slipknotzim wrote:
i thought the screemers and the flmaers both got 5++ saves now sense they only have the deamon rule, and there isent anything in the deamon book about Tzeetch giving the +1 to invl saves in it ,IIRC or am i missinforemed i took some screemers recently as allys and took only 5++ i thought that was to balance them out.

also Necron99,
good luck buddy.

Screamers and Flamers are indeed a 5+ inv save now, but the Screamers get a 4+ cover save from turbo boosting.

necron99 wrote:Wow thanks for the great tips everyone!

What's the down side to focusing on fateweaver himself? I've had a couple of games where my opponent had one dude that buffed the heck out of his army. One is a CSM w/daemon ally tally list. Seems to be the new craze in my club. Once that tally starts pushing 20 things get really bad. In another game one of my opponent's psykers got misfortune which I had never played against. Let's just say rerolling saves on wraiths is really, really bad. I attribute losing that game to that one psyker.

Before an Epidemius list gets the tally to a 3+ fnp odds are you'll at least be killing models when trying to focus him down. When you try to focus down fatewaver, odds are it will take so many shots to do it the rest of the daemon army will get to walk all over you unscathed.

Focus all tl tesla destructor on fate weaver. He's a t5 fmc with a rerollable 3++, but he only has 3 wounds and has to pass a leadership test every time he takes a wound. His bubble for buffing friendly units is only 6" which is good for teska destructors but more importantly pay attention to his facing. If hey stays swooping his facing limits where the rest of the army can stay within his bubble.

Also of you can ground him charge him with wraiths.

Spread out, that 6" bubble doesn't go far if you are spread out. Also don't waste shots into flamers/screamers if they are within 6" of fateweaver.

As far as handling screamers/flamers wraiths work best for both.

Wraiths are a good counter for flamers. Just assault them. You will lose one wraith on the assault, then tie up/kill the flamers.