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Just as the post says. What is the best way for my Rubric Marines to cope with cc units. I play a pretty basic wall tactic most of the time and have had lots of trouble recently getting my marines killed in cc.

I guess I mostly struggle with elder and dark elder. striking scorpions and wyches are really nasty and if they can get my rubrics engaged, I basically can't use them for the rest of the game.

What is a good way to deal with them? thanks

You need an IC that can kick the teeth in of any CC units that get close.

I highly suggest 'old man Abbadon. He can say 'Get off my lawn!' when any CC units get close to your CSM. If anything does not get off his lawn, Abbadon proceeds to wreck face. He will wreck entire squads of striking scorpions in a single round. He will tear up wytches in 2 rounds.

If you're going to be using Rubric Marines, yes, having a nasty IC also in the unit can dissuade people from attacking you. This also gives a good target for Boon of Mutation, if you're willing to risk perils and/or wounding the IC.

The only other interesting thing that I can think of at this moment is to abuse the fact that you do have SnP. You can't overwatch, but you can still charge the turn you shoot -- so you may actually want to be the one charging instead of the one being charged. You get a bunch of AP3 shots, and then a charge off, so you're mitigating the lack of overwatch. Rubric Marines are still a bit subpar, but if you're going to use them, I'd actually suggest using them aggressively, potentially with Abaddon in a forward squad that actually wants to get into combat. You'll at least take people off guard and dictate the course of battle to your opponent.

CSM always seem to beat my BA ass in HTH. I'm not sure what you're worried about.

It can be tricky. Remember to always keep your rubrics in terrain if you can to make charges more dofficult. Also, if you still have operational rhinos, use them to block access to your rubric after they shoot by doing a turbo-boost of 6 inches and making sure the quickest route to them is not available.

So:

1- Rhino moves up to 6 inches, if it needs to.
2- Rubrics climb out of rhino and into cover, shoot their target.
3- Rhino turbo-boosts six inches to cover rubrics, blocking the best lines for assault, bottlenecking enemy units.

 Sephyr wrote:

It can be tricky. Remember to always keep your rubrics in terrain if you can to make charges more dofficult. Also, if you still have operational rhinos, use them to block access to your rubric after they shoot by doing a turbo-boost of 6 inches and making sure the quickest route to them is not available.

So:

1- Rhino moves up to 6 inches, if it needs to.
2- Rubrics climb out of rhino and into cover, shoot their target.
3- Rhino turbo-boosts six inches to cover rubrics, blocking the best lines for assault, bottlenecking enemy units.

You can not move any further after your unit disembarks. Pg. 78 So no "flat-out" for the rhino. Staying in cover and using a counter-charge sounds like a good idea. You could disembark, then move the rhino.

Not sure staying in cover is going to help much against the units he is worried about. Fleet + grenades is pretty hard to hide from.

How about Daemon allies? They have decent cc units like Daemonettes or DPs.

Make sure you spread you troops out and are in cover.Also chaos lord in termie armour is pritty decent in combat and chaep 5 man termie units for counter assault give em mark of slanesh so they strike same time as striking scorpions/other eldar shiz.

thanks for the feedback guys!

I think I might have been a little to specific earlier. a lot of folks at my FLGS play dark elder, and a few of them also play regular elder. I have some troubles playing against them as my thousand sons themed army. close combat is really the only weakness I can see so far since there are no dedicated melee units for a tzeentchy army. I could takes allies, but then i'd just be playing a different army. I want to play mine

maybe it will help if I explain what I have?

I have a sorcerer lord, 3 squads of thousand sons with six men plus a sorcerer, one rhino, a hellbrute 20 cultists and a predator

that's what I normally play with. I've also got more thousand sons and a the beginings of a demon prince that I am tzeentching out. but they are not done yet and would throw me over our usual 1000 points anyway

Try a similar tactic to the Imperial Guard speed bumps.
Stick your cultists in front.
The plan being for the cultists to be charged (never charge themselves ). Hopefully the enemy will destroy them in a single turn leaving them out in the open for you to shoot in your turn.
Of course the last thing you want is the cultists to survive a round of combat...

Things to abuse on Dark Eldar: Poison, low T, bad armor

Getting Dark Eldar to shoot at your crappy cultists in cover abuses their poison only being able to wound on a 4+

Low T and armour saves means that if you spam dakka you can easily wipe them out with some cultists, try to keep them in cover and don't charge Wyches (die en masse to any shooting) but feel free to charge kabalite unless its a trap

Also to the OP, what's your opinion on normal CSM with ccw pistol instead of cultists? Possibly MoK (even though i hate khorne, I'm still suggesting it) because 20 of em at 300-400 is lolzy

 grendel083 wrote:
Try a similar tactic to the Imperial Guard speed bumps.
Stick your cultists in front.
The plan being for the cultists to be charged (never charge themselves ). Hopefully the enemy will destroy them in a single turn leaving them out in the open for you to shoot in your turn.
Of course the last thing you want is the cultists to survive a round of combat...

This, but - stick them in units of 10 as well. This gives you multiple speed bumps AND increases the chance of them being wiped out on the charge.
There's a chance you'll lose them too quickly to shooting this way, but you can try and keep them out of sight to begin with to mitigate that.