Major Threats - Cover All Your Bases in 6th Edition

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**Saythings**

This post is to help people create balanced lists. It gives them an idea of what to look out for in 6th edition.

I'll keep updating this list as more are suggested. Let me get this started:

Monster Mash -

Spoiler:

Terminators -

Spoiler:

Mech Lists -

Spoiler:

High AV Vehicles -

Spoiler:

Flyers -

Spoiler:

Aegis Defence Line -

Spoiler:

Gunline Armies -

Spoiler:

Massed Infantry (as well as Hordes) - With the inclusion of Hull Points, armies that enjoy Mech lists, such as the IG and MEQ, abandoned this old tactic. They saw the strength in massing infantry and minmaxing troop choices. This led to large blob squads of footloggers and 10-man squads of power armor with special/heavy weapons. The easiest way of dealing with these large squads is to include some form of template weapons; it may include bringing a few squads with flamers, heavy weapons with small templates, or artillery with Large Pie Plates. There tactic generally includes hiding behind an Aegis so including templates that ignore cover is always a plus. One of the few changes in 6th include "barrage sniping". When 6th came out, wounds in the shooting phase come from models closest. Even large blast template weapons have to follow this rule. You may put your blast template over the more clumped part of a squad, but the wounds still come off models closest. However, with barrage weapons, you take the wounds from the center of the blast!! Not only this, but the enemy would not get cover saves from an Aegis as the blast comes from the center of the template and not from the weapon. They would get their cover saves in Area Terrain such as trees, but they will not get cover from walls and LOS terrain (hills, etc). Barrage Sniping can also be used to snipe HQs (that may cause instant death) or the special/heavy weapons in squads. Without the specialized weapons, a normal squad loses most of their threat. Some armies in 40k have a huge lack of template weapons; Try to include 1 or 2 templates weapons at a minimum and any torrent of weapons. Another thing to keep in mind is how the enemy deploys. Most armies that have tons of bodies generally have to spread their army across the entire deployment. This allows you to strategically stack your army to one side (extremely effective in Dawn of War). You only have to deal with portions of their army at a time. Focus your shooting on the units in front of you and use the terrain to LOS yourself from the rest of his army. Mass infantry can be a tricky beast to tackle but loads of shooting is the trick. Force the enemy to make saves; they are bound to fail some.

Gunlines with Mech - Dealing with Gunline armies in general are a pain in the neck. They come in all shapes and sizes and you're going to have to have an answer for each. A lot of armies will try to bubble wrap their tanks with infantry to give you a hard time to get into melta range. Long range support fire it going to be your best friend. You could try to clear up some squads in the front and make room to run a Melta into range, but at that point the damage may already be done. Including a few long range weapons in every list is important. You're going to need to slow down a gunlines firing power. I would say even in a cc-orientated army, there should be Turn1 long range threats. You don't want to handicap yourself by crossing your fingers and hoping you go first and get a Turn2 assault off to do your damage. There are a lot of weapons/threats in 40k that might need to go Turn1. The biggest example of this is the Vindicator. Limiting the number of shots a vindicator shoots is huge. Taking 1 less shot by one might make a break a game. In a game of chance, I'd rather include 1 or 2 lucky Lascannon shots then none at all. Some will argue that against a Gunline army only have 2 long range shots might not cut it. This is true. But I would never field a completely 100% all-in rush list without some kind of firing support. You should have long range support to at least weaken some of theirs. Unless you plan on outgunning another gunline with your gunline, you need multiple threats. Don't build a pure assault army without being able to throw a wrench in the mix.

Death Stars -

Spoiler:

Paladins, Jetbikes, Swarmlords, OH MY! - The most important part of a Death Star is realizing two things: How many points is it? And what's it's goal? Most death stars take up HUGE amounts of points, generally anywhere from a 1/4 to a 1/3 of his army. This means you have to prioritize whether you want to shoot at it, bubble wrap it with cheap troops of your own, or ignore it. All these responses have a pro and a con. Shooting it: (Pro) If you have enough shooting to deal with it then you might completely destroy his deathstar before it can hurt your army. If this happens, not only did you destory a major threat, but you most likely destroyed 1/3 of his army at the same time. This in mind, most deathstars are extremely durable. Terminator/Paladin - Use AP2 weapons and S8 weapons to Instant Death the W2 pallies. Bike/Jetbikes Deathstars have 3+ Sv and 4+ Cover - Use AP3 Templates that Ignore Cover. (This is extremely specific, but some armies have them). (Con) Yes, it can seem like the best idea but what if you shoot EVERYTHING you have at it and it still doesn't die. Not only do they still have a decent size deathstar, but you have to deal with the rest of his army at full strength. YIKES! Bubble Wrapping: (Pro) Death Stars are going to assault something eventually, you might as well choose what's going to get assaulted. Get the cheapest unit you have to distract them, or tarpit them. Any large blob will do. They only have a certain amount of attacks so the longer they last the better off you are. (Con) Some armies don't have cheap units to waste. Power Armor is extremely expensive no matter how bare you run them. I wouldn't suggest this method with MEQ. However, you can use empty transports like Rhinos or Pods to slow their advance. Ignoring it: (Pro) You decimate the rest of his army. This generally leaves the Death Star at full strength but you deploy correctly, he can only kill 1 squad/vehicle a turn. If you have plenty of MSU, he can't kill everything. (Con) If you don't have enough speed bumps, they could become an unstoppable force and table you. Death Stars are painful and some are faster than others. Be careful.

The best advice I can give you against a Death Star is treat each game differently. It's probably one of the most annoying things to handle. Each army is going to have to play it's own strengths and weaknesses. It's hard to say what's the perfect strategy against one because each Death Star works differently and each general uses it differently. Your best bet is to know your army's strength and protect it. The enemy is going to go after what he deems most threatening to his army and go after it. PROTECT IT. Throw something in the way to slow his Death Star down. You can deploy your Blob Squad around your important weapons/tanks. You could try kiting his deathstar and avoid the painful and inevitable assault. The later he gets them into combat the better off you are. If he doesn't get into an assault until Turn 3, that's generally 1 less unit dead for you. While he's locked into combat, try backing up the rest of your army, or get a cheap squad wrapped around it to keep it from assaulting more important targets. I'd only suggest tarpiting if you have cheap and expendable units. Shooting and running is generally the best tactic.

Fast CC-Orientated Lists -

Spoiler:

12" Movement Units that Ignore Movement Restrictions - These units are going to want to get in your face and fast. As mentioned below, they are almost always going to get into assault Turn 2. They generally only need to survive 1 turn of shooting followed by a volley of overwatch. Afterwards, you'll dealing with a handful of dice and a prayer your squad doesn't get swept. Dawn of War is going to be the hardest deployment type to avoid this Turn 2 assault. However, in any deployment type, I'd argue you could use pre-measuring to your advantage. You know there will at least be a 24" buffer between the two armies and most likely his CC units will be on the edge of his deployment. There are two ways of looking at it: 1) He goes first. He won the roll off and chose to go first. You know exactly where they are. Deploy appropriately. He can move 12"+D6 Turn1. and 12"+2D6 (on charge) Turn 2. In Hammer and Anvil and Vanguard Strike, you'll have a much easier time of doing this; try deploying your "squishy" units 36" away and in terrain. If he assaults through terrain he has to roll 3d6 and remove the highest. This gives you a slight cushion. Not only is he less likely to get the assault off, but with the limited movement, he will most likely not going to get all of his models in range in the assault. You'll take less wounds. In Dawn of War, he will most likely be within 36" of SOMETHING. But keep everything you can in terrain. The 3d6 rule is killer and I've seen double 1's and 2's more often than I'd like. This is a game of chance so you might as well put the odds in your favor. 2) You go first. You know he is going to want to get into combat and he's most likely going to stack all his CC units near your meat and potatoes. Plan for it. Bubble Wrap and put your best CC units near the front. In this scenario, you'll get two turns of shooting (plus overwatch). (In all honesty, he'll always want to go first, but you won the roll this game, right?

) You'll need to focus fire and focus fire well. Most lists will probably run 3 squads of their favorite Fast CC units so you're going to need a lot of shots and a lot of focus fire. Kill one and go to the next. Most likely, he'll get into combat with one or two, but hopefully after two rounds of shooting, they won't be full strength. Deployment is going to make or break you when you play against a list with Fast CC-Orientated Lists. I can not emphasize this enough. The addition of pre-measuring in 6th edition is huge. Do not underestimate it. If you deploy correctly, respond to their movement, and focus fire, you'll get the upper hand.

Deep Strikers -

Spoiler:

"The Walls Are Moving!" - Another extremely aggressive list to deal with. Fortunately, the strategy to play against it similar: Deployment. It's going to make or break any list. The pros and cons against playing a deep strike list varies. On one hand, you know that the enemy threat zone is anywhere he wants to drop. However, you know he's going to want to drop near you. You're probably wondering, how is any of this a good thing. Well I'll tell you; the only reason you would choose to deep strike a list is to get models with a small threat range closer; May that be CC squads, short range shooting attacks, or simply to add mobility. They want to get close to you as soon as possible. They plan on deep striking and deep striking a lot. You can dictate where he's going to drop (in a sense).

There are two options:
1) Turtle up and spread out. I would suggest this if you have a slow army with a large foot print. You can spread yourself wide enough where they can't deep strike behind you. Fighting a battle on 1 front is a lot better than 2. You want to keep his army from surrounding you and get shots on any Mech's Back Armor you might include. Also, your Aegis line doesn't do anything when he deep strikes behind you!

2) If you army is mobile enough, you can charge them. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a strange strategy, but bare with me. Like I mentioned before, you control where he deploys (or deepstrikes to). You know he is going to deep strike near you, so why not take the battle to him? He's going to have something on the table Turn 1 (because of the new 6th edition rules that requires it) and you're going to want to shoot at it to weaken something. Not only this, but you know he's landing near you. This might seem counter productive cause I just told you not to get surrounded, but when you go to him, he lands on his table half instead of yours. This strengthens your chances of getting secondary objectives like Line Breaker and furthers his chances.

If you manage to get Linebreaker and squeeze out First Blood, you almost guarantee yourself a win or a draw. You just need to clear troops off his objectives for the rest of the game. Once again, this is a crazy strategy and I only suggest it under a few circumstances. You need to watch for: Their Number of Troop Choices, Your Army Mobility, Which side of the table has more Objectives, and if it's worth losing your original position. Terrain, Army Composition, and Objective Placement all play factors in this. What you really need to look out for if Objective Placement and who has the Initiative! If you have the majority of the objectives, you can sit back and spread out, but if he does, you could take the battle to him. If you go first, you get two turns of re-positioning (may it be spreading out or full assault to get prevent his Linebreaker), but if he goes first, you know you only have 1 turn of moving. You will have to process whether your army is mobile enough to execute different strategies. Regardless of how you want to handle deep strikers, your deployment is going to be your greatest weapon.

Psychic Choir -

Spoiler:

Heavy Psyker Lists - This is a tricky one. There is no real answer to heavy psyker lists. Not only is every army different in how their psykers work, but 6th edition made psychic powers random every game. You're most likely not going to get the same psychic powers from one game to the next. In any given tournament, you'll see a wide variety of powers. Each one requiring a different outlook and a different strategy. As mentioned below, 6th edition really did a number of psychic defenses. They nerfed hoods on the chapters to the point where they barely affect gameplay. The only true psychic defences that remain are located in Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Nids, Eldar (to some extent), and, if I dare say, Black Templars (vow).

How to combat Psykers: Army Assessment and Strategy. Most of the good psychic powers in 6th are blessings. As we all know, you can't Deny the Witch on a blessing so they either pass it or fail it (hopefully with Perils! hehe). The only thing you can do it play smart. Ex: If they are running Nids and run the standard 2 Flyrants and 2 Tervigons, most lists run them with Biomancy. There is a great chance of them rolling some Iron Arms and Endurances. If they pass, ut oh; they are going to remarkablely hard to kill this turn. This being said, you can't just assume they will eventually fail their test one turn and fire everything at it when they do. You have to assess how important it is to kill the model in question. Look at your army and ask yourself: do you have the firepower to kill them? You have to know your army well enough to know if you have the fire power necessary to kill the psyker. Is it safe enough to ignore them for the time being? This leads me to my next point: If they fail, yay. This may be the time to strike. This is the weakest the pskyer is going to be, you have to punish them for failing. Once again, you're going to have to assess if you have the strength to kill them.

As for maledictions and psychic shooting attacks, the same rules apply. You'll get a DtW check, but nothing to can rely on. Each turn is going to play a little different depending on what the enemy casts and on what units. Just always be aware of what spells they rolled on and their threat range. Always (ALWAYS!) premeasure before you finish your movement. A lot of psychic powers are done at the beginning of the enemy's movement. If you can plan your movement properly, none of your models will be in range on enemy psychic powers.

Hopefully, if your army is balanced, you'll have the strength and numbers you'll need to handle both situations. Any list will have to deal with psykers; this is inevitable. Unless you're fielding Nids, GK, SW, Eldar, or BTs, you really don't have any say in the matter of psychic powers. You'll have to play it by ear and each game is going to be different. The most important part playing against psyker lists is remembering what they rolled. Remember what spells can buff their army and what spells can hurt yours. This is key.

Summary -
Every list needs to have an answer to these threats. If you leave any of these out, you leave yourself vulnerable. TAC, Take All Comers, lists need to be balanced and have an appropriate response to all of the topics mentioned above. You can get away with winning with an unbalanced list, but there will always be a risk. Yes, you can win without having adequate responses to what I mentioned, but I don't like bringing an army and losing to Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Additionally, (as suggested by other Dakka members), it is always important to play to the mission and not to the enemy's army. The suggestions above are listed to help you get an idea of what is out there. In no way am I stating that you will even see half of these strategies, but I'm stating them to give you an idea that they could be. Every meta is different and you will have to play differently at almost every competitive scene. Thanks for reading and I hope this helped!

Post Below if the Spoiler Format helps or hurts the post. Thanks!

**Araenion**

Fantastic! Most people likely know about these, but it's so refreshing seeing it laid out like that. It's a great summary and I'm looking forward to you adding more little chapters to it as time(and 6th edition) progresses.

**minigun762**

Great list.
The only possible additions I'd make is maybe a horde section or a fast mover (bikes) one.

**Siphen**

Definitely needs a "massed infantry" section (not necessarily horde). Can you deal with 50+ infantry models, be it guardsmen or even marines?

Deathstars would also be a good one. There are a lot of different types, but you can expect to see a unit with a 2+ rerollable save of some sort at a tournament.

Of course, I don't think there's any army that can deal with absolutely everything. You have to pick and choose what to include - keep in mind that a single answer is often not good enough. One meltagun doesn't necessarily mean you have protection against high AV vehicles, just like a Quad Gun doesn't mean you can always deal with flyers.

**cryhavok**

Nice, in addition to the other suggestions I would like to see a psyker's section

**dementedwombat**

Nice, exalted.

Thanks for the checklist. I'd say my Tau are pretty capable of dealing with most of the things on this list. Riptide ion plates are a wonderful thing, as are markerlights (Aegis line...what aegis line? I don't see any Aegis line.)

**Hedgehog**

Excellent work. I'd also suggest a sections on gunlines, and maybe also deep-striking armies...

**Thariinye**

The guys in the 11th Company Podcast (at least, their newest two episodes) seem to think that there is no truely effective way to take an all-comers list in the current meta. I unsure as to whether I agree with them or not, but they also do a similar layout of army types in 6th edition, and what you need to prepare for when going to a 6th edition tournament.

If I remember correctly (other listeners correct me if I'm wrong), the army types that need to be taken into account are:

Flyerspam lists. Whether it be Necron Fliers or Heldrakes or Vendettas, your army needs to not die versus these lists. This means that, if a marine army does not have a way to effectively deal with Triple Heldrake, you need to not face a player that plays that, because a Marine army without an effective counter just auto-loses.

Super-fast aggressive CC lists. People still like to bring CC armies, but most CC infantry don't really cut it anymore. They are too slow and get cut down too easily. The remaining CC armies all try to get a guaranteed Turn 2 Assault. Necron Wraiths, Shunting Dreadknights, Spawn + Juggerlord, Khorne Dogs. All of these have the potential speed to only need to weather a single turn (plus overwatch) of enemy shooting, and so may arrive relatively intact into opposing lines.

Hordes. This includes Guard Blobs, Ork Blobs, Deathstars, and just massed infantry of all kinds. Objectives are critical in this game, and if you just swarm the board with too many tough dudes for your enemy to take out, you can win by holding those objectives. This also includes MC spam, from Tyranids to Tau to Eldar to Grey Knights. High Toughness is the thing.

Drop Pods (and other alternative deployment armies). Drop-pods are still a great way to get into the enemy's face without taking a lot of shooting beforehand. Pedro lists are still great, Wolf Guard in Drop Pod lists are still good, Strike Squads are great, Outflanking or Infiltrating anything is good. These are all ways to get into the opponent's face and backfield scoring units to win the objective game.

Tau. The amount of relatively survivable shooting that Tau put out is really quite astounding. They're one of the main reasons for the failure of non-speedy assault armies, and can still doom fast CC armies too. 36 S7 AP4 shots from one Broadside unit will destroy a lot of things.

Many tournament armies combine multiple elements to form a single army. For instance, the standard Necron Netlist has both flyerspam and Fast CC. The Fast CC is a distraction that ties up the enemy forces and whittles them down, while the various Nightscythes and Anni Barges blow up holes in the enemy, and then take objectives relatively uncontested at the end. Grey Knight Strike Squad Spam does both Infantry hordes and Alternative Deployment. Anything with Tau allies is doing Tau of course.

Each of these armies has weaknesses that can be exploited. Flyerspam lists are somewhat countered by horde lists, as well as Tau/Skyfire. Infantry hordes are dealt with by Tau/Torrent of Fire. Super-fast CC lists are dealt with by super-high Shooting, good bubble wrap, or good counter-assault. Against MCs, you need either a load of S6-S7 hits, to deal with stuff like Riptides or Dreadknights, or loads of S8-9 hits, to deal with Wraithknights/Wraithlords, as well as Iron Arm'd TMCs. Just having a little bit doesn't cut it. Drop Pods are dealt with by Interceptor or counterassault. Tau are dealt with by, actually, we don't really know yet, as they're still too new.

Any All-Comers Tournament list needs to have at least okay matchups against all of these army types. This is difficult, if not impossible.

**Saythings**

Thanks for the responses guys!! I've updated a few times this morning. I still need to do a deepstrike entry as well as a psyker one! I'll get to it as soon as I get some more free time. Let me know if you guys see anything wrong with what I said or something I could add!! I don't want to give advice that might not be 100% correct.

**Martel732**

I agree with the 11th company guys. The Helldrake alone creates mismatches that can't be compensated for without opening your list up to rapeage by Vendettas. This excludes Forgeworld, since you can't rely on bringing Forgeworld.

The guys at 11th company really know their stuff as far as how the game is actually executed and what is good and what stinks. It super stinks for us BA if you go listen to their BA analysis.

**AresX8**

This thread represents why I still come to Dakka, for every once in a while you get a post made out of gold.

Exalted, good sir!

**Farseer Faenyin**

Exalted as well. This is a great place for people to come to see the current meta.

You might want to add 'Eldar' to the Mechlist section and query the peepz on a way to counter 6-7 AV12 vehicles that have a 4+ Cover save and 4-5 of them downgrade Pens to Glances on a 2+.

**Saythings**

Deep Strikers added! I can't comment much of Eldar Mech or Eldar in general as I don't have much experience playing against them. As Eldar become more popular near me, I'll be sure to update the list!

**ImotekhTheStormlord**

Another Exalt to the pile. Great work.

**madtankbloke**

thats a nice summary of different army types, and although building an army is one of the most important parts of the game, even an optomised TAC list will find itself deficient against several of the different army types. The fact is that if you try to cover yourself against all possible opponents, you will find that often you are weak against all of them.

I am firmly of the oppinion that the best way to build your army is to pick a theme, and build your army around that. you will at times find yourself facing an army that is a hard counter, but if you have a specialist list focussed on one strategy, against a TAC list designed to cover all bases, you will often find they can't cope. I also find it is very helpful to strongly consider what you can do to your enemy rather what they 'might' be able to do to you when list building.
you should still bear in mind what your weaknesses are, but every list is a compromise between what you want to include, and what the points allow you to include, and if you are going to have a weakness, you must at the very very least know what that weakness is

**Saythings**

I completely agree Madtankbloke! I wanted to let new players know what's out there in the competitive field. As others have commented, the more successful lists include multiple threats from several of the categories listed above. Including a little bit of everything might make your list a little bit weaker, but you should go into a game knowing what part of your list can handle each threat. Ex: although it may not be the optimal use for them, Twin Linked High Strength weapons are brought for Anti-Vehicle, however, it can cover some AA responsibility because it is TL'd.

The thread was created to inform newer players of what they might see and to create lists with these topics in mind! Thanks everyone for the exalts!

**JGrand**

I agree with the 11th company guys. The Helldrake alone creates mismatches that can't be compensated for without opening your list up to rapeage by Vendettas. This excludes Forgeworld, since you can't rely on bringing Forgeworld.

The guys at 11th company really know their stuff as far as how the game is actually executed and what is good and what stinks. It super stinks for us BA if you go listen to their BA analysis.

I don't know if I completely agree. It is impossible to make an army without a bad match-up (or even a few). However, "bad match-up" doesn't equal "auto-loss." Competitive TAC lists have to strive to avoid "auto-losses" and minimize bad match-ups.

For instance, as you pointed out, you can take a number of Night Scythes, a Crimson Hunter, or a Vendetta to answer Drakes. However, these aforementioned units can be countered in games in which you go up against something like a Vendetta, and it comes in from reserves after your flyers. That's just the way it goes. I will say that with the exclusion of the Helldrake, most flyers can be effectively ignored (and were). Hence, the early 6th edition MEQ spam. Despite the existence of the Drake, the ability to limit flyer mobility and largely ignore them is still valid. Additionally, the move away from MEQ places even further value on massing cheap scorers. My point is, you can compensate for Drakes without totally selling out. Hell, a skyfire/interceptor Tau Commander with 2x Fusion Guns can make Drakes think twice. That inclusion is a relatively small point commitment if you want it to be.

As for the OP, I agree with the list for the most part. I would caution that you don't need to be able to obliterate all of those categories in order to have a good list. Terminators aren't all that common (Pallies a bit more so). Mech isn't common in a competitive environment (Serpent spam may change that a bit, we shall see). Heavy amounts of Deep Strikes are a bit rare as well.

To echo my original point--have a plan to deal with all of the things out there, but generally focus on Hoards, Flyers/Flying MCs, fast threats, Tau, and ignoring cover. Interestingly enough, the answer to beating these units is often accomplished by the same type of weaponry. Finally, play the mission. You don't have to kill your opponent's whole army and enslave their next of kin to win a game. Just take one more objective or kill one more unit.

**Hedgehog**

More good stuff!

One thing - is it generally reckoned that a gunline has to be foot-based?

Your comments there seems to be about dealing with massed infantry - whereas I'd have said a gunline is a list focused on bringing the maximum firepower to the table, regardless of platform. An example would be guard with infantry backed up by multiple Russes and artillery.

Generally speaking you need to think about about using mobility and cover to counteract the enemy fire, rather than trying to kill them with shooting faster than they're killing you (usually a losing proposition)...

**varl**

exalted and subscribed, good sir! I look forward to more updates and the discourse they foster

**sudojoe**

The following is basically copy pasted from a purely GK perspective take on things from the GK tactical here on Dakka. Basically I've come to pretty much the same conclusions as the OP. The only thing I think you are missing from the above is psychic choir such as nids/daemons/ and to an extent elder can do to pretty devastating effects. However, unless you play Nids or Wolves, the psychic defenses are getting stripped out of the game pretty fast and while it's certainly a bad thing, I don't think there's much that can be done to counter too much unfortunately.

As another aside, if you notice, almost all of the truly bad things above, are inherently unbalanced in and of themselves in many ways and don't really try in many cases to counter everything while simply trying to overload one aspect of someone's TAC lists or push for hopefully a bad match up. It's another set of meta tactics I suppose. Even if you bring some anti-flyer, I'll bring 10 fliers for example. I'll overwhelm the defenses and then try to win somehow there after. You put in some poisons/snipers? Good, now here's 5 FMC's (I can fit in 5 FMC's daemons codex and minimal troops at 1500 even). It's very imbalanced but can certainly overwhelm any sort of defenses someone might have included to help vs FMC.

I'd almost argue as an add on to the above that choices you take for any list would do its best to counter one of the above but you always need some redundancy such that your troops / MC's/ tanks can fill as many roles as possible or be specialized and have enough back up units that are like 2nd best or 3rd best but can still contribute.

How to build a TAC (take all comers) List

gotta have a coverage for a wide variety of problems including

1) Psychic defense / ways to kill psykers ( vs Eldar/GK/SW/BA/tyranids/daemons for the most part)

2) Anti-air (just about everyone cept necrons and IG can potentially take out more of your air defences than you have so it's almost vital to have at least some air power yourself )

3) ways to preserve gunline - hold against fast movers/outflank/deep strike

4) at least some anti-horde and ways to get rid of cover.

5) some ways to at least slow down any deathstar / feed them cheap units

6) have some reserves - you really want first blood so keep the squishies off the first turn or so

7) CC tank of somesort with 2+ saves for melee, as well as some ways to deal with challenges and it could be that you just don't have anyone they can challenge

8) survivable objective campers

9) how to deal with 2+ armor

10) mobility

A List really needs to be able to do all of the above in some way shape or form to be good at competing as a TAC list now. Missing one or more of the above really leaves you open to getting curb stomped by some list that goes all out. i.e. if you don't have any psy defense, Nids will eat you whole. No anti-air, necrons will stomp you, no outflank protection, IG got some 8 rhinos and 50 guys that can show up on your door stop or some crazy deep strike crisis suit bomb.

Luckily, GK have some good tools for most of the above:

1) psy defense - mindstrike missles, null rod, psy-out bombardment, condemnor x-bow, psyocculum shooting, and reinforced aegis!

2) Fliers- twin linked weapons are common, but so far my best anti-air has been another storm raven. or of course quad gun

3) outflank - castle one corner and use coteaz to defend it. really discourages some folks, also I almost always take a strike squad or interceptor now just to stand in the middle of the map and warp quaking.

4) anti-horde - my space monkies and their flame throwers have failed pretty hard on that front cause I never have enough of them. having DK with incinerator has been very useful. Thinking of paying more for a psylincer now to add to that.

5-6) death stars - so far my list has depended alot on cheap chimeras to feed to the enemy or rhinos or razorbacks and of course running away. I tend to reserve alot now with some squads or just park the vehicles behind cover in the first turn. I have won and lost a few fights now just cause of first blood. Cotez going first really helps with reroll initiative stealing also

7) CC tank - typically I like to have some techmarines with a staff or like a purifier with a staff... or terminator with a staff.. ya.. lots of staffs lol. Liby with staff and the reroll divination power has been really strong for me

8) sturdy objective campers - we can get some nice numbers of bodies but this part I think we're a bit behind. I can't really find enough points to stick crusaders everywhere but I really want to and it's one of our better survival troops.

9) how to deal with terminators -we got choices but does depend a bit on rending for our AP2, we'll also have some issues with volume of fire too. We're definately decent but not to like necron or tau or IG level.

10) mobility- one thing so far I've been struggling with for my scoring units as I now no longer depend on my cheap transports to get anywhere. Something like bikes/jetbikes or what not from allies that are fast moving troops are going to be really useful I think but I don't have alot of personal experience with it though I feel like it should work. Anyone have any experience on this?

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How to beat - (death star / crazy combo) - stuff you'll see at toruny from someone but hopefully not your friends

1) Eldar - the new Eldar are very counter MEQ which is kind of bad for us. We at least have some henchmen to soak up fire but they have a huge ton of it. Between lances/wave serpents and battlefocus LOS'ing war walkers getting shot up is pretty much a guarantee. Assaulting them is also kind of rough if they are of the wraith D-scythe variety even for our DK as their 6's on overwatch can instant death. Charge their vehicles if possible (will be tough in many cases) and try to get cover as while the eldar have a lot of high powered shooting, they don't have too much ignore cover (other than torrent str 8 night spinners, D-scythes which are slow usually, or dark reapers). Again, most GK lists lately don't seem to have too many tanks and this makes it usually tougher for the ones we do have to survive as they can get overwhelmed pretty easily by the amount of fire power coming in. All is not bleak however as the DK can usually beat up a wraith knight if we can engage them in combat as we can force weapon them. Catching them will be the tough part however as they can usually move just as fast and if you shunt in, they will likely focus fire you down. Really need 2 DK's to force engagements. Crusaders also have become my favorite henchmen vs eldar as the 3++ Is very handy to tank all those bladestorm rending shots and other silly amounts of AP2 weapons. GK marines and terminators are really tough to field vs the new Eldar. Heck, paladins also will die pretty fast as even basic guardians are now BS4 and TL bright lances will kill them dead. While the new runes of warding will mean we have access to more psychic powers, do be careful If you try to debuff them as they can get a 3+ DtW and generally ignore our higher strength shooting with their cover saves. Currently one of the tougher matches for GK to win if the Eldar played right and went with lots of shooting/mech. Much more to come in this department.

2) Necron air force - probably going to be the most devestating thing on the table for a while. Until there's alot more flak missles (which we'll really only ever see by allies), you can try countering with storm ravens and maybe a grand master to psy communion to try and delay your reserves till they are needed to kill the doom scythes.2 storm ravens could help alot in this kind of match up but I'd just use them as dedicated gun boats and not bother with assaulting troops out of them. IG allies could also be good as you can have some hydra + quad gun + vendetta + storm raven to retiliate somewhat. Still a very difficult match up though. Maybe if long fangs got flakk missles, that could be an option too. I'm really hoping DA will have some cyclone missle launchers that have sky fire. Terminators in 4+ or 3+ cover from ruins will be hard for the necron air forces to budge and can dish out the hurt fairly well. Time will tell what we'll have access to. For their ground forces, you may have to use SM/SW/BA drop pod turn 1 alpha to eek out a win if they tend to just have 1-2 things on the table. With the update, now MSS also gets to try and activate your force weapons against you. Counter this by using up your warp charage and use hammer hand or something else. A way to tarpit for a turn or two is to get the sarge killed from combination of warscyte + MSS via challenge then be locked in with them on their turn with the rest of the squad. You can then fight it out on his turn and then either fail and fall back (no sweeping with ATSKNF) or continue to tarpit their guy. If you get away, that's an extra round of shooting and assault you can do back on your next turn. (sorta like a wierd sorta hit and run). Also wraiths will now be at I1 for charging through terrain even though they ignore it due to rule book change v1.1. Their lash whips however will make your guys also swing at I1 so don't get too cocky. Also they do not get an extra attack from their CCW upgrades so don't let the other guy talk you into it! In the mean time, try at get into assault with his ground forces as best as possible and be in his zone sorta helps as well as spreading out in general. With so much air power, he won't likely have that much ground forces which will be vulnerable to everything you got shooting at him. Take advange of cover saves vs big nasty fliers.

Alternative counter strat is to use huge blobs of men with either IG platoon allies or other races of big blocks of infantry (such as necrons @_@). If you got sometihng with like 60 bodies in it, it's pretty much impossible for even tesla spam to deal with very well. Used by recent NOVA winners to help counter fliers and hold objectives for the win.

3) Daemon/nid flying circus - alot of crazy flying monstrous creatures? well in some ways we're better than most to deal with them as we can get decent volume and perferred enemy works in shooting as well. Just becareful though as a henchmen army won't have perferred enemy and DK's can't really do much to them at all unless they fail and crash down for you to assault. Just have to #1 kill the troops usually for the daemons as they are usually going to be small and pretty weak as compared to before, and #2, ignore the troops for nids as they won't have as many flying MC's and you can clean them up with flamers pretty effectively after the big ones go down usually. SitW will still make it very annoying to activate force weapons without a banner though so just be careful and try to assault with some IC's that can buff hammer hand or activate themselves and or a second squad in the same assault phase to improve your odds.

4) IG gunline - decently effective and probably will out shoot anything in the GK gunline by range and blast templates. Try to have at least something in your list that goes fast and can engage armor / assault as their alpha strike capabilities are quite good. Try some reserves or use something like SW drop pods and or necron allies to get close enough to engage. working your way over the map by foot or even ground tanks is pretty suicidal. The good news I suppose is that most competitive IG lists will use SW allies as well to have psychic protection and probably pod down a JAWS rune priest turn 1. GK have some protection against this with coteaz and warp quake so we'll do better than most. Hugging cover and rolling up a flank is about what you expect the best from. Play to the objectives, it'd be pretty tough to table a dedicated IG blob. If you have long range shooting, go for the company command squad and infantry platoon command squads to take out orders from the mass of men behind aegis. If you can counter the most likely melta vets dropped from vendettas you stand a good chance. Vendettas otherwise will still mess up GK pretty well unless you manage to hug cover/have enough henchmen bodies but doubtful the psyfleman dread will survive much.

5) The new CSM ignore cover AP3 spam - new on the block, noise marines, oblits, spawn, and heldrakes with baleflamers are the new black this season. Frankly they are just mean vs most of our builds. Blastmasters are going to frag most of our henchmen/foot lists along with vector striking heldrakes. Best counters I can come up with currently is to abuse LOS as much as possible and try to get into assault with power weapons if able vs horde spamming down alot of their units one at a time (most smar players will be positioning the blastmaster as far back as possible to avoid getting killed off and with 48' range, can't really blame them) Helldrakes will still be tough to handle and while you can try to ignore one , ignoring 2 is not really gonna work for our expensive GK's so some sort of anti-air with good strength will be needed. with 3 hull points, a 5+ invul so it doesn't have to jink, and hard to hit, they are really tough to take down so storm ravens are a great option. An interceptor gun like the quad / icarus may help with 1, but 2 drakes and smart opponents will frag the gun easily especially with AP3 str 8 weapons that ignore cover so don't depend on them. Fortunately for us, DK's in standard lists can stand up to quite alot of these and will be able to help neuter at least 1 maybe 2 squads of noise marines generally before he's focused down I've found. Terminator builds will also do well which is another reason I'm now looking at solo paladins as scoring units and Draigo as a big bad distraction or just using a grand master. Also decent with land raiders in the list if you don't mind missing out on the Reinforced Aegis (more useful with henchmen builds)

6) Strats vs chaos daemons - we're usually doing pretty well vs daemons but be careful to almost always work in a dreadnaught into the list as the reinforced aegis would help alot vs all the daemon shooting. FMC spam can be problematic but some MSU builds can help vs these guys or alternatively you can go heavy flier allies to counter them too. More play testing will be needed to see what competitive daemon lists look like but prelims say FMC spam and seeker blocks for turn 2 assaults or some combination of nurgle cover save spam vs plague drone spam. More to come with more testing.

7) New Tau - henchmen gunlines are taking a big beating lately vs tau from the games I've seen. Light vehicles like rhinos and chimeras are easy fodder for tank hunters missle spam (huge amount of str 7 hits via broadsides with high yield missle pods and missle drones) especially as there is alot of ignore cover abilities with markerlights and other buffs from the Tau HQ. The tau riptide is also really nasty to take down at range due to JSJ as well as his long range ion cannon which makes it very important to be patient and use manuvering to our advantage. If there is no LOS blocking terrain on the board, then I'd say you really need a new board as it's pretty much an unfair advantage to play vs gunlines without them and all strageties really involve them in some way shape or form. If you truely have none, then the advice is to go buy some tau or IG and win all your games cause it's then just about the shootiest armies and unfortunately GK cannot straight up out shoot the tau outside of some really stacked non-take all comer lists like the all interceptor + shunting GK's to flamer all the tau to death turn 1 or something.

With that said, tau are quite static actually. Their weakness is that they really depend on markerlights to get the most out of their units. Pathfinders/broadsides and to a large extent even kroot (with snipers) and fire warriors don't like to move forward much. Lacking slow and purposeful, the gunline if set up, has a rough time repositioning itself and if it chooses to do so, will make it fairly weakend for a turn. If you don't take advantage of that, then you will have a much harder time winning. Focusing flamers (i.e. shunting DK's with incinerators) will make short work of tau scoring and markerlight units. Warp quake will protect the backlines against alot of crisis suits deep striking and you want to block LOS as much as possible to any broadsides. It annoys the heck out of tau. Most tau builds don't use alot of mech outside of some hammerheads and maybe 1 or 2 devilfish so just work on their squishies as best you can. Assaulting them is also problematic as they have alot of overwatch fire so best advice on that front is to roll up any assault units on an extreme flank. It'll limit how much fire comes in and if at all possible, use something to screen fire from other units like a land raider or terrain if at all possible.

Vs The riptide, you have some options - warp rift forcing an Initiate 2 check works well if you can get in range. Allied JAWS rune priests in a drop pod also help (if they don't have too much interceptor). Can tie it up with necron wraits/overlord (if you can get in range). Ignore cover plasma cannons/lascannons if you get lucky on the divination table, if you manage to do it, using 2 DK's with teleporters can usually get you in range for one of them to assault and kill it the following turn with force weapon!. Even with JSJ, it often doesn't have that much room to manuver away. Purifiers with hammers or termy/paladins in a storm raven can also sometimes get close enough theoritically to get a charge and force weapon it to death but I've found this to be somewhat unreliable as my ravens are eating alot of sky fire usually. Targeting his drones also work decently as it can force a leadership check for the big guy and unless he's got an etheral nearby or IC attached, he's got some 27% chance to fail as well. None of the above are fool proof however and the riptide is probably the best Tau single unit like the heldrake is CSM star player, or like our DK's so it's always going to be a fair challenge to take them down.

**Saythings**

That is mighty long post about Grey Knights. I wish you could have made that a spoiler or just attach a link to it!

There are a lot of interesting points though so I'm glad you included it!

Psychic Choir added!!

**cozby**

Small note, space wolves have a great psychic defense in the Runic Weapons that didn't get nerfed in 6th, unlike the psychic hoods. Nullify a psychic power at 24" on a 4+.

**Sinji**

cozby wrote:
Small note, space wolves have a great psychic defense in the Runic Weapons that didn't get nerfed in 6th, unlike the psychic hoods. Nullify a psychic power at 24" on a 4+.

Just give it time it seems that most Psychic defence is going the way of buffs to DtW. Nids are due out after Marines so I imagine they will have a bit of a nerf as well. Eldar have a totaly different system for negating Psychic powers and I imagine this will be the new trend.

**evildrcheese**

Excellent post. Exalted.

D

**cryhavok**

Very nice additions.

**Desubot**

Oh neat very nice.
edit: im blind
exalted.

**Dalymiddleboro**

Amazing post

**Sinji**

Could Artillary Spam make the list?

**Saythings**

Artillery spam would fall under Gunline Armies (the subsection of Gunlines with Mech). It's the same strategy. You'll have to judge how much damage the artillery can do to your army type and how important it is to focus them. Ex: Some IG Pie Plates are AP4 and doesn't necessarily hurt Marines too badly. If I was playing the Marines I would simply go for objectives and aim for his troops. Of course, all advice is taken with a grain of salt as all games are different and have thousands of variables.

Glad you guys like the post! Hope it helps you prepare yourself before beginning the daunting task of creating a list.

**Sinji**

Artillary spam is a type of gun line i agree but must be delt with in a different way to mech or foot as everything is T7 & can G2G (Go to ground) for a 2++ behind an Agies. Can be dffcult to remove before it does a number on you.