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I play as necrons and regularly get smacked aroudn the table my a friends death Company squad.

he tends to roll it in a Stormraven along with a Death Company Contemptor Dread.
Normal load out is:

9 men
1 Chaplain w/ powerfist
2 Thunderhammers

in a game last night they charged a squad of 6 Wraiths and a D-Lord and let rip with over 40 attacks, with re-rolls to hit and wound, BS5 and S5.

My cunngin placement on his prt the only models in base contact with the wraiths were the 2 thunderhammers and the chaplain so the whip coild made no difference at all- they all hit first.

I managed to stay in by the skin of my teeth - had 1 wraith and the D-lord with a single wound remaining.




So - is there an effective counter to Death Company? Is it as annoying as "Take more Wraiths" or "Shoot them sooner"? he seems tohave foudn the sweet spot where the squad is nigh unkillable.

DC are just a significantly more Killy Melee Death Star (I have no idea why my iPad is capitalizing all of that). Wraiths are far more resilient (multi-wound and invul) but their weakness is number of dice.

So no, there isn't a great answer other than "Shoot down the Stormraven" because its not possible for him to assault the turn the SR arrives. If you pop it his DC will be much weaker (Str10 AP1 hits do that).

Don't let them get the assault, this will cut the number of attacks they get by at least 1 per model, and give you a better chance of surviving.

Thanks. just wanted to be sure i wasn't missing something.

I did try to shoot down the Raven. I had 2 squads of 10 warriors sat on a Skyfire nexus objective - didn't manage to roll a single gauss-glance!!

Maybe it will change when i get my Gauss Sentry Pylon built.

Use Annihilation Barges and Nightscythes to shoot down Ravens, its far more reliable than using infantry (and doesn't rely on getting Skyfire on an objective).

Death Company do have an impressive damage output, but when you flip things back the other way they aren't much more durable than a normal Marine, which is why they fail as a Deathstar. For starters it would help if you are the one charging, not being charged, as they have far less attacks. Generally you can just drop them with basic torrent of fire weapons, but obviously Plasma and other low AP weapons are better (but hard to find for Necrons). And yes if you can shoot down the Raven the squad is basically neutralised as well, so aim for that if you can.

Scorpiodragon wrote:
Don't let them get the assault, this will cut the number of attacks they get by at least 1 per model, and give you a better chance of surviving.

Two per model, they have rage.

Death Company do have an impressive damage output, but when you flip things back the other way they aren't much more durable than a normal Marine

With Feel No Pain, so S8 is generally preferred over S7.

Putting DC in a Stormraven is asking for disaster. The Stormraven may not show up on time, or may get shot down, instagibbing everyone inside.

If the DC are deployed another way, just shoot them, or spoiling assault them. It's actually harder to get the DC to work correctly than to actually foil them, since there are many points of failure.

 Praxiss wrote:


he tends to roll it in a Stormraven along with a Death Company Contemptor Dread.

9 men
1 Chaplain w/ powerfist
2 Thunderhammers

AFAIK there's no such thing as a death company contemptor dread. There's BA contemptors....which suck more then you can imagine, and there's DC dreads and then there's normal furioso dreads. I'm going to assume it's a death company dread here.

200+ point storm raven
240 point DC
125 point chaplain
125 point dreadnought
--------------
690 points

690 points in a single AV12 flyer. Shoot the thing down and watch it burn.

Couldn't you run some scarabs to tar pit them with too, I don't play either army. However if you can get yourself enough time to get the wraiths somewhere else to deal damage and shoot the DC to death you might stand a better chance.

yeah - it is all dependant on them NOT gettingthe charge.

they each get like 2 or 3 base anyway, and then they have Rage as well so they get 2 more on the charge. Add in the Chappy so they are re-rolling hits and wounds.

i think they hit me with like 45 attacks on the charge.

As a BA player, I cringed at the notion of him putting DC in a Raven. Just shoot down, or spoil the charge, and shoot some regualr marines up with bolters.

 g0atsticks wrote:
As a BA player, I cringed at the notion of him putting DC in a Raven. Just shoot down, or spoil the charge, and shoot some regualr marines up with bolters.

Ditto. My storm raven never takes any passengers.

Battlecannons work wonders

Doesn't that kind of defeat to object of taking one? I woudl have thought you're payigna preium for a fast assault gunboat...if you take out the transport option aren't you just left with a more expensive StormTalon?

 Praxiss wrote:
Doesn't that kind of defeat to object of taking one? I woudl have thought you're payigna preium for a fast assault gunboat...if you take out the transport option aren't you just left with a more expensive StormTalon?

... armour 12 flyers are much more resilient than almost anything else in the game. Plenty of armies have no real way of killing them. While not for expensive death stars a 5 man troop unit is often worth boarding for late game objective taking.

The easy answer is run a fortification with an Iccarus lascannon, preferably the aegis defense line veriety.

 Praxiss wrote:
Doesn't that kind of defeat to object of taking one? I woudl have thought you're payigna preium for a fast assault gunboat...if you take out the transport option aren't you just left with a more expensive StormTalon?

Yes, that's why the Stormraven is not very good, and I'd rather have the Stormtalon for the BA at this point. As I have stated over and over. Overcosted is the biggest curse in this game, and the BA have this problem in spades^2.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ruminator wrote:

 Praxiss wrote:
Doesn't that kind of defeat to object of taking one? I woudl have thought you're payigna preium for a fast assault gunboat...if you take out the transport option aren't you just left with a more expensive StormTalon?

... armour 12 flyers are much more resilient than almost anything else in the game. Plenty of armies have no real way of killing them. While not for expensive death stars a 5 man troop unit is often worth boarding for late game objective taking.

Not true. AV 14 is far more durable. Prescienced lascannons or MM without skyfire add up very quickly against the Stormraven. All the ceramite does is make it so my MM just shoot from 24" and don't bother getting closer. It only has 3 HP. And MM are still AP 1. Don't let the snap fire thing intimidate you.

Besides, I have demonstrated to local BA players over and over that it's a winning strategy to shoot an entire army at a loaded Stormraven. If that's the only thing I kill + the instagibbed troops, I'm way, way ahead. The BA literally can not spare those 5 men you speak of. Have you read the codex? Have you seen how much everything costs? For fun, go read a Necron or IG thread and see what they can get for the same amount of points. Then imagine the battle unfolding in your head....... yeah. BA have serious problems and we have virtually no margin for error. Adding the cost of the Stormraven + 5 men that can all be killed by removing 3 HP is too risky. This is ignoring bad reserve rolls as well. In a way, the Stormraven is the biggest fail transport in the entire game. Think about that for a minute.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Stormraven, in my lists, is quite literally a hedge against hellturkeys. If hellturkeys didn't exist, I'd probably never use them, because you just gimped yourself against Vendetta lists. The flyer balance in the game really sucks right now, imo.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The final bottom line is that DC are great against medicore to poor opponents, but are terrible against astute players.

Its always scary using DC in a SR, as a former BA player the only time they weren't spectacular is when my mate ran the cryptek that can teleport units, i'd zoom on (yes i put them in a SR. works more than you'd think, but if it doesn't turn up, you lose) he'd know i was aiming close to were i was for the assault, and teleport away leaving me nothing to assault and a cron shootphase to sit through, of course this had it's bad points, always hilarious and always scary


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Its always scary using DC in a SR, as a former BA player the only time they weren't spectacular is when my mate ran the cryptek that can teleport units, i'd zoom on (yes i put them in a SR. works more than you'd think, but if it doesn't turn up, you lose) he'd know i was aiming close to were i was for the assault, and teleport away leaving me nothing to assault and a cron shootphase to sit through, of course this had it's bad points, always hilarious and always scary

If you really want a melee counter to DC try allying in some Incubi.
They cost slightly more but will murder DC in close combat. Striking first with a bunch of power weapons will reduce their number greatly and the DC's WS5 is countered. With some pain tokens they have FNP and FC to match up well. Still probably depends on who charges though.

Hell, you could even run DCAs. They cost 5pts less than DC, strike before DC with 3 attacks each. Ironically they can be taken in a storm raven too, and it's not like coteaz is a bad investment.

 infiltratethis wrote:
Its always scary using DC in a SR, as a former BA player the only time they weren't spectacular is when my mate ran the cryptek that can teleport units, i'd zoom on (yes i put them in a SR. works more than you'd think, but if it doesn't turn up, you lose) he'd know i was aiming close to were i was for the assault, and teleport away leaving me nothing to assault and a cron shootphase to sit through, of course this had it's bad points, always hilarious and always scary


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Its always scary using DC in a SR, as a former BA player the only time they weren't spectacular is when my mate ran the cryptek that can teleport units, i'd zoom on (yes i put them in a SR. works more than you'd think, but if it doesn't turn up, you lose) he'd know i was aiming close to were i was for the assault, and teleport away leaving me nothing to assault and a cron shootphase to sit through, of course this had it's bad points, always hilarious and always scary

Seems like a lot of moving parts to assault one squad with another squad. You could get rid of much of the uncertainty by paying for the Land Raider.

Only 50-20 pts more too. Plus land raiders tend to absorb a ton of firepower as even good players can get distracted by a crusader bearing down on them.
More likely to get a T2 assault too.

Overwatch.

No, you don't ever want to be taking overwatch fire against DC. That means they are assaulting you.

Martel732 wrote:
No, you don't ever want to be taking overwatch fire against DC. That means they are assaulting you.

it means they are trying to assault you. You might be able to kill enough of them to stop them if you exploit psykic powers and flamers.

Well, that's true. The full BS overwatch divination power is quite amazing. I still prefer to launch spoiling attacks just to be sure, though.

Well if you're playing Tau (which I'm aware the OP isn't) then overwatch would be fantastic what with BS 2 and supporting fire.