Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Daemon players at my local FLGS have been using this unit pretty reguraly, to much success. The unit is very hard to kill and hits like a truck. With scout, 12 inch cover ignoring movement, and 40 wounds this unit is in your face turn 1 with no time to deal with it. What are some good counters to this hammer?

Bubble Wrap is your best bet. 20 Flesh Hounds and a Herald is more than 400 points and it can only wipe a squad a turn. If you can feed it small squads of bubble wrap you can hugely diminish the damage it can do. Fast skimmers are also a good choice since you can flee from them pretty well and perhaps force them to waste a turn in the corner of the board. The large unit footprint does make it difficult to hide from them, though.

I see them with my group... and I can only give you what I do with them.

Assault them first... either sacrifice something to the unit or tar-pit them. If they get first turn, it will depend.. it is common to have a LoC in the mix to toss out some forewarning combined with the grim... with just the grim they could still be 3++.

I use wraiths in my "gunline" to jump them. Need to make sure they don't get the furious charge and the extra attack

If I get to go first I try to gun down the unit carrying the grim. Since you don't have to worry about any buffs at this point.. you need to do a mad damage. I will move out my wraiths with the plan to assault them after I shoot them up.

ever seen what a ravenwing support with 5 landspeeders (w/ac) can do to unarmoured t4 stuff with minimal cover saves? Throw in a lib with prescience if your worried. Oh wait, what army you play? lol

What army? For Nids, I keep casting enfeeble until they fail their Dtw, then I pour Strength 6+ until they die, all the while keeping a bubble wrap.

 Roci wrote:


Assault them first... either sacrifice something to the unit or tar-pit them.
.

If possible, there's your solution. I run Hounds, and they are ten times deadlier when they charge. (3 attacks str 5 versus 2 str 4 is a huge difference)

A dreadnought or other walker will keep them tied up all game.

20 khorne dogs only have 20 wounds against S8+. If you're not bringing enough weapons to throw around some instant death, then you're not bringing enough anti-tank weapons, much less anything particular to handle this unit.

On the flip side, it's only 40 wounds. 40 not terribly special wounds. Odds are you're not bringing enough anti-horde weapons either.

Really, demons only particularly excel against medium-strength weapons. Sounds like your firepower has gotten sucked right into the sweet spot they don't care about.

Dawnofthedoug wrote:
Daemon players at my local FLGS have been using this unit pretty reguraly, to much success. The unit is very hard to kill and hits like a truck. With scout, 12 inch cover ignoring movement, and 40 wounds this unit is in your face turn 1 with no time to deal with it. What are some good counters to this hammer?

People can give all kinds of advice but I think that it really depends on what army you play and what you have to work with as models. Why not tell us what you play and what you have?

I play Eldar a lot and one tactic that comes to mind is indeed, bubble wrap units to take a charge and then charge the hounds with a Wraithlord/Knight or even Wraithguard so they will either be unable to wound the Wraithlord/Knight at all and will probably be having to take instability tests (and if they roll double 6s they are all wiped out) or they will be wounding on 6s in the case of Wraithguard and be tied up quite a while.

But anyway, what do you play?

20 Hounds is always a fun unit for CSM to ally with as well. Grimoire from the daemon ally HQ to the hounds and it is very difficult to kill. 3+ armor save 40 wounds.

Lots of bolters can kill them fast if they don't have 3+ save. flamers/assault units can do some damage too. I don't reccomend Str8 weapons unless that is the best target. High str should go to MC/Tanks.

 Badablack wrote:
A dreadnought.

This. It's a pain in the ass. Fortunately most people don't run dreads, and hounds can out maneuver dreads 99% of the time.

It's easy to tie them up with armoured units that cc since they can't scratch dreads/wraithlords with their puny attacks, aren't able to voluntarily fall back, and sit there taking DI tests all game long.

 Badablack wrote:
A dreadnought or other walker will keep them tied up all game.

Hounds are beasts and have fleet. Any half-way decent player will be able to run circles around a dread and still assault what they want to.

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

 Badablack wrote:
A dreadnought or other walker will keep them tied up all game.

Hounds are beasts and have fleet. Any half-way decent player will be able to run circles around a dread and still assault what they want to.

yes but lets just say your juicy charge targets have a dread or two nearby, then the Dreads can always counter-charge and tie up the Hounds. Sometimes 40k maneuvering is like chess where you just try to move your army to force the opponent into making potentially bad decisions...Either Hounds charge a unit and then get counter charged by a Dread thereby being useless or they hang back so either way it could be a win-win.

 mortetvie wrote:

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

 Badablack wrote:
A dreadnought or other walker will keep them tied up all game.

Hounds are beasts and have fleet. Any half-way decent player will be able to run circles around a dread and still assault what they want to.

yes but lets just say your juicy charge targets have a dread or two nearby, then the Dreads can always counter-charge and tie up the Hounds. Sometimes 40k maneuvering is like chess where you just try to move your army to force the opponent into making potentially bad decisions...Either Hounds charge a unit and then get counter charged by a Dread thereby being useless or they hang back so either way it could be a win-win.

I'd argue that generally, if you're holding your Army back into a protection bubble of Dreadnoughts, you've probably ceded control of the board in general to the Daemon player. Thus, the Hounds have done their job.

He will also fail the Grimoire 1/3rd of the times leaving the hounds with only a 6+. Pour enough fire into them and they melt.

They also lack any low AP CC attacks. Units with good armour saves and/or FNP can hold them up for a while.

Hounds work best for me against high count, low armour troops (IG blobs) or vehicles. Charging into marines usually ends in a battle of attrition. Terminators make them weep.

 Shandara wrote:
He will also fail the Grimoire 1/3rd of the times leaving the hounds with only a 6+. Pour enough fire into them and they melt.

They also lack any low AP CC attacks. Units with good armour saves and/or FNP can hold them up for a while.

Hounds work best for me against high count, low armour troops (IG blobs) or vehicles. Charging into marines usually ends in a battle of attrition. Terminators make them weep.

Simple fix to that is to attach a Herald on Jugger, I haven't settled on a typical load out yet, but 20 Hounds with the Rage locus and the Herald throwing out a bunch of AP2 gives the unit a distinct cutting edge. (Not to mention 80 S5 A on the charge!)

 azreal13 wrote:

 Shandara wrote:
He will also fail the Grimoire 1/3rd of the times leaving the hounds with only a 6+. Pour enough fire into them and they melt.

They also lack any low AP CC attacks. Units with good armour saves and/or FNP can hold them up for a while.

Hounds work best for me against high count, low armour troops (IG blobs) or vehicles. Charging into marines usually ends in a battle of attrition. Terminators make them weep.

Simple fix to that is to attach a Herald on Jugger, I haven't settled on a typical load out yet, but 20 Hounds with the Rage locus and the Herald throwing out a bunch of AP2 gives the unit a distinct cutting edge. (Not to mention 80 S5 A on the charge!)

Ehh, the Exalted locus is better in every situation. Re-rolling hits versus +1 attack, re-roll hits is always better. Especially because you can use it when you get charged.

Also, on the note of Terminators... The hounds win out every time point for point versus terminators. Think of 8 point-per wound 3+ saves versus 40-50 point per wound 2+ saves. Hound don't care for 2+ armour because you usually end up paying a lot more for that 2+ armour. Yeah, they will be tied up for a bit, but hounds win that war of attrition every day.


Honestly there isn't a great way to counter them.

If you have a deadnaught, best thing to do is to offer them a sacrifice unit for them to charge near the dread so that he can meander into combat and tie them up for the rest of the game. Other than that, they will run through a lot of things in your army.

I have fought fleshhound packs twice. One match, I was using my drop/jumper list. I dropped my fragnought directly in their path, killed several of them and made them try to run around the fragnought.

The other time was with my hybrid mech list. I managed to cut them down to size by sacrificing party of a tactical squad. The pile in moves of the assault followed my a mediocre consolidate roll allowed my TL HF razors and flamer ASM inside to deliver the pain and cut them down to a manageable size.

The above poster is correct that terminators will be overwhelmed by these things. These guys were only manageable in my games because I'm a cheap ass and bring lots of cheap (relatively speaking) stuff from the BA book instead our fancy overpriced theme units.

Hounds a excellent unit for Chaos, and I always bring one units in my CSM/Daemons list.

My only debate about improving hounds are Bloodthrister or Hearld...but that is another topic.

Walkers/mass shoots turn one to weaken are a decent counter to hounds. Hounds being so fast and killy in most combats are very hard to counter.

It's hard to see that shooting is worthwhile unless the grimoire fails. Seems to me that you need to either be mobile enough to keep away until that happens or you need to have a unit that can tie them up. Failing any of that I guess you just have to feed it speed bump units.

I haven't seen them yet. I guess with my list I'd try to thin the herd with Wave Serpents if going first or redeploy my static elements away from them if going second, and charge them with a Wraithknight if necessary. My big fear would be that the WK would be getting set up for a charge by something with ID CC attacks or S8.

How is everyone seeing this unit on the table? Are they normally paired wth a hearld of Khorne with Grimoire or some other type of allied/Primary HQ?

Are Daemons normally the Primary when coming across this unit, or in a CSM primary for a deadly assault unit?

I have never played againist them...

azreal wrote:20 Hounds with the Rage locus and the Herald

Umm, how many points does that cost?

 Ailaros wrote:

azreal wrote:20 Hounds with the Rage locus and the Herald

Umm, how many points does that cost?

Smidge over 400 pts IIRC. Like I say, I've not really settled on a hard set up for it, so it can vary. It's a hefty lump, but it has served well on the couple of occasions I've run it.

 azreal13 wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

azreal wrote:20 Hounds with the Rage locus and the Herald

Umm, how many points does that cost?

Smidge over 400 pts IIRC. Like I say, I've not really settled on a hard set up for it, so it can vary. It's a hefty lump, but it has served well on the couple of occasions I've run it.

Again, Hatred locus is better on all occasions. But that 400 points (and possibly fateweaver) gets you 20 wraith-equivaltents 2/3rds of the time (or 8/9ths of the time)

and people friggin hate wraiths from what I've been told. I mean 8-point per wound wraiths? That also have scout, fleet, ignore all cover, WS5, and 4+ DTW? I'll take that in all my lists.

Oh and they actually do more damage point-per-point than wraiths and a D-Lord to everything except AV12 rear vehicles or dreadnaughts. GEQ they crush, MEQ they still crush, and TEQ edge out wraiths and a D-lord y about half a terminator... And that's Terminators! And then wounds coming back are mitigated because they are dealing with 8-point per wound 3+ invuln versus 18 or 23 (if whip coiled) point per wound. That and you can take 20 in a unit versus 6 in a unit with wraiths.

So in possibility, you could have 60 wraith equivalents in a list (yeah only one unit will be able to have it at a time, but honestly only one units needs it at a time). That is a hard bugger to deal with. Especially because the guy that makes them wraith-EQs is being held up in that impenetrable unit.

a couple vindicators can't hurt at all. otherwise everything everyone put above is great. Those ID large blasts will thin the numbers to half easily before you charge them.

Exalbaru wrote:
a couple vindicators can't hurt at all. otherwise everything everyone put above is great. Those ID large blasts will thin the numbers to half easily before you charge them.

I'm a big fan of Vindicators, but you're overestimating how effective they'll be. Assuming they've been Named, only 1/3 of wounds will fail armour and die, and 1/6 of hits won't wound. Assuming they're not bunched up for some reason, and you get a good meaty hit, the blast will probably hit maybe 6? hounds. So, you're looking, statistically, perhaps two dead. Repeat for the second Vindie and that's 4 gone.

Poof, that's your chance gone, as by that point they will already be on you, and will be wrecking face.

 azreal13 wrote:

Exalbaru wrote:
a couple vindicators can't hurt at all. otherwise everything everyone put above is great. Those ID large blasts will thin the numbers to half easily before you charge them.

I'm a big fan of Vindicators, but you're overestimating how effective they'll be. Assuming they've been Named, only 1/3 of wounds will fail armour and die, and 1/6 of hits won't wound. Assuming they're not bunched up for some reason, and you get a good meaty hit, the blast will probably hit maybe 6? hounds. So, you're looking, statistically, perhaps two dead. Repeat for the second Vindie and that's 4 gone.

Poof, that's your chance gone, as by that point they will already be on you, and will be wrecking face.

my fault, i keep forgetting we are factoring the GoTN in. Then trying to do this is a big hope it leaves them with only a 6+ hahaha, not as good of odds at all.

That's why Fateweaver is there to bump up the chances with his reroll (roughly 90%)

Hounds are nasty. The other posters have the right idea in that how you counter them depends on your army. With my GK, I"ll activate force weapons and take them out, trying to maneuver myself to get the charge and not the other way around. With my Eldar, I pour as much glorious S6 shots into them as I can, force that 5+ invul save to go to work. If you throw enough dice at anything, it goes down...