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I'm realizing with every codex release this season, giant multi-wound (and it just keeps getting bigger and higher it seems (thanks eldar)) MC's are becomming more and more prominent.

Given the amount of armor these things are generally packing (2+ with some sort of 5++ down to 3++ invuls and often claiming cover 4+ with some sort of ruins) and often with massive toughness (i.e. iron arm hive tyrants or tyvergons) and sometimes with FnP or other tricked out survival things (i.e. tzeentch daemons with 3+ armor)

That they are really really hard to take down. While ignoring them can work if there's like just one of them, people are learning to take 2 or more and they generally start to go from just annoying to "I will lose this game if I can't stop them somehow"

While it's entirely possible to stack as much skyfiring / interceptor lascannons (or equivilent) as possible into a list or just stay flying all the time and hope you don't get vector struck to death, they are not typical builds I'd consider in many cases due to balance issues.

I'm mostly looking for ideas on what people think are good ways to count them and often someone surprises me with something I didn't consider before while still maintaining a TAC kind of list.

So as for what I got:

Snipers - it's not that bad of an idea and most everyone has access to snipers or at least ally in some snipers. Hits on 3-4's and wounds on 4's even with T10 madness, it's a decent way of getting wounds on. Only think I can come up with that has the volume to really threaten some MC's like tzeentch daemons with power armor is large kroot blocks with sniper rifles.

Large packs of ratlings may also be useful. Eldar rangers aren't that bad of an idea either.


Poison - really only an option for guys like DE, or nurgle to a degree, but can get alot of wounds on board an otherwise very tough to kill critter. Can't think of any easy ways to ally in poison though to most groups. Imperials have very few options here I feel.

Plasma - great at ignoring the armor and has good all around coverage. Most races have something close to this but can you really get that much plasma everywhere? My answer so far has been almost always yes. Get as much plasma everywhere and it will be fairly good vs most anything you come across. The only problem is the extra points you have to spend to get all that plasma. Plasma cannons, plasma guns, (not so much plasma pistols) and just spam the heck out of plasma (or melta/ion weapons) seems to have been decent. Just falls a bit short when facing horde armies though good vs most anything else. Just the gets hot rule and points limits seem to hurt me along with range.

Speaking of range --- lascannon equivilent weapons. (lances/overcharged ion accelerators/destro cryptecs/rail guns/what have you) have been waxing and waning lately. As people are moving away from light transports, I've seen more heavy duty vehicles and the old lascannon has started to drop off a bit in favor of more meltas and back and forth with people picking them back up again as tanks are found to not be as bad as previously thought. Can you base a list on tons of lascannons? Saber defense platforms says yes! In general though, I'm not as big a fan of this as plasma as most lascannons aren't very mobile and costs a ton of points along with fewer shots in general.

Sacrifical screening units - I'm ok seeing lots of guys go down but I'm not sure this is always a good thing. #1, not every race has enough bubble wrap. SM has problems getting cheap enough bodies or replacement bodies for example. Alot of MC's are actually fairly mobile and now a days often can shoot pretty damn well. DK with incinerators or riptide with IA or whever the heck the new eldar thing has, looks to be fairly threatening. Flying/swooping guys are not going to be stopped very easily by guys they can fly over unless you are fully castled in the corner. I like the concept but I don't find this successful to winning as most times I have to move to get objectives and can't castle all the way through turn 5. #2 People get pretty confident after a while meaning the opposing player. As he wipes out whole units, it boots his/her personal morale. I've found that if someone hasn't killed off one whole unit off my army by turn 3, they get pretty disheartened and start to make alot of mistakes as their hearts aren't in it as much anymore. More experienced players don't care nearly as much but still gets very frustrating for them and can lead to other mistakes.

Other counter attack units of your own - I've tried this several times in different environments and vs other opponents of radically different playstyles/builds and so far vs MC's, they just aren't as dependable as I'd like. The whole challenge thing messes some armies up. The armor save you are packing is going to be ignored so unless you have some storm shield, it will be tough to survive. Multi-wound and FnP often don't work as smash attack destroys most units in this category and you aren't always getting through their 2+ armor. Unless you have some high Initiative, fleshbane, or force hammers of somesort, you generally waste a lot of points trying to chop down these guys with infantry type units. (unless you have necron MSS which is about the only reliable way)

Your own MC's. - it's gonna turn into some sort of godzilla monster mash I feel like in the near future but as more and more codexes are comming out with big MC's, I feel like this will happen more and more often. FMC nids vs wraithknight vs ripdite vs daemon prince vs greater daemons vs DK's vs upcomming things (I predict an ork-a-saurus).

What other stuff have you guys found lately that will help counter MC's in general and still can keep your list as a TAC?

Force Weapons work great and Anti-Tank Weapons. The big problem though with Anti-Tank is that you at most will only take a single wound off where as with a tank you can blow it up. Another thing I have noticed is Artillary units poping up more. The T7 vs Shooting attacks and going to ground behind an Agies line can be a brutal combo. I'm starting to see a change to the meta concerning Big Tough MC's where the Dread Knight seems to be the best counter to them. Hitting at S10 with the Doom Fists then ID from them being Force Weapons seems to work just fine.

Generally I run a fairly typical Tyranid list (Armoured Shell Tyrant rather than Winged though, so it's a little slower), but one thing I always try to make room for is a full brood of 30 Toxic Hormagaunts. Usually these are just a "spanner in the works" unit that exists to confuse and distract, but I've found that they really do enjoy swarming over the MCs (if they can catch them).

Tyranid shooting, such as it is, has caught up a little bit in the anti-vehicle department but aside from quad-Devourers on a Tyrant or Carnifex, there isn't really much I would bother throwing as a Wraithknight, and to a lesser extent a Riptide, or large Daemon. For me, the answer seems to be more in the melee department.

That means Toxin Sacks, or Rending Claws (or both), or a Trygon (a Toxic Trygon will still absolutely devour any of the above it can catch, bar a few particularly lethal Daemons). I also run Crushing Claws on all my Tervigons, just in case they do wind up in combat with something meaty. 2+D3 S10 AP2 attacks is fairly dangerous.

The only other thing I would consider doing is throwing Termagants at them to hold them in place, but that's not as reliable as you might hope (unless you run multiple huge broods, which is always tempting but often not that practical).

I faced off with GK against a Tau player, only one Riptide so I can't comment on dealing with multiples.

The best thing about the Riptide was its survivability, its shooting was actually relatively bad.

As Sinji said, a Dreadknight is a big threat to enemy MCs, and mine certainly was in that battle. It didn't actually kill the Riptide (killed a hammerhead, flamed fire warriors), and eventually got dakka'd down by the rest of the Tau Army, but it forced the Riptide (and the rest of his army) to constantly move away from him, giving me control over objectives lategame. The S10 AP2 Force Weapon (rerolling with the Greatsword) mean that a Dreadknight is indeed a good counter to enemy MCs. It fails against ID that's faster than it, but that kills most things.

There's a difference between the T6 2+/5++ of the Riptide and Dreadknight, and the likely T8 3+ of the Wraithknight/Wraithlord. T8 really wants to be countered by Poison weapons, or Sniper Weapons, or massed Long Fangs with Missile Launchers. Plasma weapons will still only wound on a 5+, which isn't really the kind of results you want to be paying for plasma for. Mass plasma will deal with T6 2+ wonderfully, but not T8.

Until more effective counters are thought of, one beats large models in much the same way as one beat flyers if you don't have effective Skyfire: ignore them, and go after the rest of the army. MCs can be neutralized with tarpit units or sustained firepower, so the MC player will have to support his large model(s) with the rest of his army. If he does, go where he isn't and win on objectives. If he splits his army to try and cover the board, just go after whichever part is weaker. Because your opponent has more resources invested into fewer models, treat his army as an extension of an elite army, and use those same tactics to outmaneuver and defeat it.

How to beat Monstrous Creatures?

1) Main or Ally Dark Eldar, 2) Put a full squad of Kabalites with a Splinter Cannon in a Raider with Splinter Racks, 3) Use Venoms with the 2nd Splinter Cannon upgrade, 4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 in such a way as to not remove other abilities from your army, 5) Obnoxiously claim "I just wound you on 4s, so there!"

30 gargoyles with toxin sacs will take any MC. The doom also hits MCs harder than most.

Also, unless they're fearless they're vulnerable to things like fear the darkness or other morale test powers.

Force weapons for ID and snipers too. 20 kroot with sniper rounds, the pure tide commander with c and c node statistically does 12 wounds to MCs, a couple rend

I play daemons against Grey knights quite frequently these last months and have noticed that the telepathy primaris which inflicts a LD-test on 3d6 is very good at taking down dreadknights (even if it only softens them up for my assault). So they must be good at other things also

Thatguyoverthere11 wrote:
30 gargoyles with toxin sacs will take any MC. The doom also hits MCs harder than most.

Also, unless they're fearless they're vulnerable to things like fear the darkness or other morale test powers.

Force weapons for ID and snipers too. 20 kroot with sniper rounds, the pure tide commander with c and c node statistically does 12 wounds to MCs, a couple rend

IIRC out of all the monstrous creatures only riptides and dreadknights aren't't fearless, luckily Tau and Grey Knights are very common these days.

Thats true but the Dread knight atleast has ATSKNF which means he won't be sweept in combat. My mate charged my psyfleman dread the other night and didn't do any damage I managed to cause a single wound and he lost combat and fail his moral test. I then rolled equal to his I test and it died. I still don't think we did it right but at the point in the game we were at it didn't really matter so we laughed.

I swear as per BRB all MC have fearless IIRC? Could be wrong idk.

Tactical_Genius wrote:
I swear as per BRB all MC have fearless IIRC? Could be wrong idk.

Well, the overwhelming majority do, but Riptides and Dreadknights are the exception.

They do all have the fear USR which means they don't suffer from fear but do not have fearless. Just to make things confusing.

I find when fighting Chaos Daemon Monstrous creatures (have had to fend off 2x Winged Daemon Prince and a Keeper of secrets!) Getting them into a position where you can multi-charge and kill them through Daemonic Instability works well, also managed to kill a Blood Thirster this way last night. Other than that I think as others have said, a torrent of fire (even if its wounding on 6's). I also use a biker chaplain with Adamantium Armor (BT) to tie up a monstrous creature and stop him from being able to shoot/assault anything else.

 Kain wrote:

Thatguyoverthere11 wrote:
30 gargoyles with toxin sacs will take any MC. The doom also hits MCs harder than most.

Also, unless they're fearless they're vulnerable to things like fear the darkness or other morale test powers.

Force weapons for ID and snipers too. 20 kroot with sniper rounds, the pure tide commander with c and c node statistically does 12 wounds to MCs, a couple rend

IIRC out of all the monstrous creatures only riptides and dreadknights aren't't fearless, luckily Tau and Grey Knights are very common these days.

Daemons are effectively fearless which is good. As said multiple combats hurt daemons as DI can easily kill off princes and GD's sadly!, I have learnt this the hard way.

hrm.. I honestly didn't even think of DI tests for my MC's when playing daemons as it's rare for me to lose combat and I almost never have anything else helping since I'm more of a 5 FMC list kind of guy

 sudojoe wrote:
hrm.. I honestly didn't even think of DI tests for my MC's when playing daemons as it's rare for me to lose combat and I almost never have anything else helping since I'm more of a 5 FMC list kind of guy

Nothing hurts more than charging a BT + 2 Princes against Lysander + TH/SS Terminators and missing almost everything, losing combat by 4 (dead prince) and watch the BT evaporate.

Dedicated Anti tank units are a good way to take MC's down, although they do take a disproportionate amount of firepwer to deal with. Plasma, lascannons and melta are all fairly decent at taking them down. i've started to take more scouts with sniper rifles in my IF's force to deal with them. wounding on a 4+ wih rending makes their high toughness irrelevant, although the good armour can be a pain if you don't rend.
biomancy can help you, using enfeeble on the MC and iron arm on your MC killer will quickly put them down.
most armies have killer combos they can use on MC's, necrons can take wraiths with whip coils, and a c'tan with times arrow to put even the largest nastiest killing machine in its place for example.

The issue isn't that MC's are on the rise, its that the new riptide, and to a lesser extent the wraithknight (since i haven't yet seen one in action) challenges our expectations of what MC's should actually do. most MC's are of the 'i'm going to eat you' variety, whereas the riptide is of the 'i can kill you from here' variety. We as players have been taking down MC's of one kind or another for many many years. Wraithlords, Hive tyrants, carnifexes Daemon princes, greater daemons and so forth, and the things they are vulnerable to are the same things the riptide and Wraithknight will be, massed anti tank, poison/sniper, force weapons and so forth.

On the rip tide specifically, what makes it such a killer unit isn't its insane weapons (which are nasty) or its ability to run away forever (which is annoying) its the combo of pathfinders negating cover and the insane weaponry. the best way i have found of blunting the Riptide is to take out the pathfinders, which is why i've started using whirlwinds more. one the pathfinders are dead (and other markerlight units) then my camo cloaked, sniper rifle armed scouts can shoot the riptides to death with from behind an ADL with a 3++ cover save or even better if they are in bolstered ruins with a 2++

For Necrons - about the only way that I've been able to deal with MCs consistently is by making sure my main troops have a MSS Lord attached to them and pray they fail their 3D6 Leadership test. Beyond that, I'd be curious to hear what others may suggest since the Necron MCs (C'Tans and Canoptek Spiders) don't really hold a candle to the newer ones that other armies have.

Unholyllama wrote:
For Necrons - about the only way that I've been able to deal with MCs consistently is by making sure my main troops have a MSS Lord attached to them and pray they fail their 3D6 Leadership test. Beyond that, I'd be curious to hear what others may suggest since the Necron MCs (C'Tans and Canoptek Spiders) don't really hold a candle to the newer ones that other armies have.

Wraiths and a DLord with MSS are a very good way for taking down MC's. I've also had a lot of success unloading Tesla annihilators into them as they can put on a stupid number of hits at a very good strength value.
As i mentioned above, i have been using C'tan as a counter. they are quite threatening on their own against most things, but against MC's i find that pairing them with wraiths with whip coild you can instantly kill them with times arrow 5/6 times. and if you also give the c'tan entropic strike, just 1 wounding hit means that they lose their armour save. so, you have a 5/6 chance to kill them outright, a very good chance of stripping their armour if they survive, and then the wraiths all have S6 attacks, and everyone gets to strike before the enemy MC due to him being I1, it worked amazingly the first few times i used it to kill Greater daemons, Wraithlords and such, but my opponents are starting to get a little wiser

I've had some success with 5-man GK Terminator squads, armed with all hammers and a warding stave. The warding stave tanks the MC's attacks (2++), then the hammers hit. It's a lot of S8 force weapon hits, or S10 instead if the MC has eternal warrior in some form or another. It's best to charge said MC for the extra attacks and psyk-out grenade bonus. Plus, you have a couple extra perks against Daemons, which are a significant source of MCs in the meta. You may lose the stave and a couple other guys, but it's a fairly reliable way to take down multi-wound models.

I could see this being an ally option too; Coteaz or a libby and a squad of monster-hunter termies. The squad as listed above is only 220 pts.

 greyknight12 wrote:
I've had some success with 5-man GK Terminator squads, armed with all hammers and a warding stave. The warding stave tanks the MC's attacks (2++), then the hammers hit. It's a lot of S8 force weapon hits, or S10 instead if the MC has eternal warrior in some form or another. It's best to charge said MC for the extra attacks and psyk-out grenade bonus. Plus, you have a couple extra perks against Daemons, which are a significant source of MCs in the meta. You may lose the stave and a couple other guys, but it's a fairly reliable way to take down multi-wound models.

I could see this being an ally option too; Coteaz or a libby and a squad of monster-hunter termies. The squad as listed above is only 220 pts.

Thats if you get the charge off, thats if you can catch the MC's etc. I would happily fly away from your termies or snipe your stave then charge killing quite a few off before they can strike back, while having forewarning and grimoire on my FMC (seeing as we are talking about what could happen).

I managed to take down a 10 man paladin squad with draigo the other week with a squad of horrors and a bloodthirster.

Your anti mc squads need to be fast. I played draigo wing with my Lord of Change/DP list, and I just stayed away from the paladins and killed everything else. Vector strike is unfair versus marines and flickering fire annihlates geq, light vehicles and dreads...

 Shandara wrote:

 sudojoe wrote:
hrm.. I honestly didn't even think of DI tests for my MC's when playing daemons as it's rare for me to lose combat and I almost never have anything else helping since I'm more of a 5 FMC list kind of guy

Nothing hurts more than charging a BT + 2 Princes against Lysander + TH/SS Terminators and missing almost everything, losing combat by 4 (dead prince) and watch the BT evaporate.

I can top it. Space marines charge my great unclean one and some chaos furies in a multicharge. They kill all the furies, leaving me with a 2+ leadership to roll on the great unclean one You can imagine how that went xD

I welcome back the Edition of the monster mash!

 sudojoe wrote:

What other stuff have you guys found lately that will help counter MC's in general and still can keep your list as a TAC?

Bane Wolves! Template, Wounds on 2+, AP 3. If hordes don't concern you much, you may as well replace some of the anti-horde weapons with the kind that can also wound monstrous creatures.

Beast hunter shells, an alternative shell for ABG command/commissar vanquishers. Basically a vanquisher shell with the instant death rule. I'm going to keep firing them at MCs, maybe some day I will get a one hit kill. Most of the MCs I see roll on biomancy though, trying to get that thrice damned iron arm power. I usually just ignore them if they have that, or a book of true names 2++ rerollable save.

Kavalion wrote:

 sudojoe wrote:

What other stuff have you guys found lately that will help counter MC's in general and still can keep your list as a TAC?

Bane Wolves! Template, Wounds on 2+, AP 3. If hordes don't concern you much, you may as well replace some of the anti-horde weapons with the kind that can also wound monstrous creatures.

Bane wolves may WOUND the MC, but that's 130pts you're paying to do one wound (if that) to a 6 wound model that cost around the 200 mark (on average, give or take a few).

Plus banewolves are tricky to use well in a TAC list anyway.