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.

What are the weaknesses of super heavies? I am not talking about tailored lists or other super heavies. I want to know ways that they can be exploited so a normal army can at least stand a minor chance. (If one does not exist, Emperor help us all. and sorry for bothering you people.)

Flyers (except against SHV that have actual AA capabilities. Which is rare)

Mass Firepower

Melta

Haywire

Psychic Powers (for a good time, use mind control, aka puppet master)

#1 check out Jy2's tacticas. Good read. http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/567956.page

Extreme MSU and flyers. The SH are all non scoring, non denial deathstars. This means they can at max target 2-3 units (depending on the SH) and that if you can kill their support then you can win the game without ever touching the SH.

The SH themselves are so varied they do not have a common weakness except that they are deathstars and that they have minimal AA abilities and will massively overkill extreme MSU builds;
Revenant
-DS melta, high volume of S7+, and tarpitting can all work. Just be aware the holofield makes it tougher than you might think and it is super fast. Haywire can work but people seem to think catching a 36" jump move unit in assault is easy...it is not.
Stompa
-Not that scary at range but very scary to let get close. Don't try to tarpit as it is very nasty in melee. Otherwise easier to kill than the revenant with standard AT weapons. There is a regen build that has been posted so you may have to kill it in a single turn.
Tau Flyer...so bad I don't remember the name...ignore
Thunderhawk - aka I am not IG so I get this
-This could end up being one of the better builds with it being a flying transport you will need significant AA to kill it or it will be able to drop troops on objective end game. There is even a regen build around this that could make it essentially immortal. It is still bad against other flyers and even worse against MSU than the others. I recommend ignoreing it unless you have the AA to kill it.
C'Tan
-I really do think this will be the best balanced build. Flyer superiority could work but you will have to fight for it as necrons have excellent flyers of their own (and give up nothing in scoring to get them). D weapons are the best answer to these. Failing that you need a ton of S9 shooting to take these down. You could theoretically tarpit it with a very big unit of zombie or IG, etc. However it is fast enough that this is unlikely. The answer to necrons is going to be very army dependent.
IG - Tank^Tank
These are all essentially leman russ squadrons taped together. They will change the game very little other than you needing to know what their weapons do. All the normal AT works fine against these. In fact escalation changes IG very little but stronghold is a total transformation of the army.

Hopefully that helps some.

The biggest weakness to superheavies is the psychic power that lets you shoot with your opponent's superheavy.

Gauss and Haywire are killing it for me so far.

you cant keep gargantuans pinned in hth, and with superstomp it can trample a unit of zombies without sweat...

I've been trying to find that rule. Where is it? I don't see anything that says gargantuan creatures and superheavy walkers can't be locked in CC, even though I KNOW that should be the case.

Can you please point me to the page?

40-60+ Gauss RF + 5-10 Voltaic staffs = one f'd up Super Heavy.

 Valek wrote:
you cant keep gargantuans pinned in hth, and with superstomp it can trample a unit of zombies without sweat...

Yes you can, they changed it. In the old apoc gargantuan creatures and titans can leave combat. In the new version they get locked in CC just like everyone else.

Yes, lets all switch to Necrons.

Otherwise just put enough high str shots at them and use flyers. Most of them are quite vulnerable as they can be glanced to death, gargantuan flying creatures do worry me, though.

How do damage results transfer over? Can you immobilize an super heavy?

Also, the revenant only gets holofields if it moves... 1st turn drop pod should take it out if there are enough melta stern guard in it.

I play Blood Angels... 9 combimeltas with prescience

Thatguyoverthere11 wrote:
How do damage results transfer over? Can you immobilize an super heavy?

Also, the revenant only gets holofields if it moves... 1st turn drop pod should take it out if there are enough melta stern guard in it.

I play Blood Angels... 9 combimeltas with prescience

1) What do you mean?

2) No

3) Wrong. Holofields are always active. It just doesn't work as well if the Revenant holds still. 4+ to hit it again when it moves, 3+ when it doesn't.

As far as I was told,a glance and a pen remove a hull point. A roll of 6 on your Pen roll gives you 2 more hull points. But you can't Immobilize, Weapon Destroyed, Crew Shaken, Crew Stunned, or Explode a Super Heavy

Baneblades are very vulnerable in cc. Moreover, these tanks are very large so that 5'' blasts hardly scatter wide enough.

jasper76 wrote:
As far as I was told,a glance and a pen remove a hull point. A roll of 6 on your Pen roll gives you 2 more hull points. But you can't Immobilize, Weapon Destroyed, Crew Shaken, Crew Stunned, or Explode a Super Heavy

Almost correct.

Glance and pen removes a hullpoint as normal. An explosion result removes D3 hull points in addition to the pen. You cannot Immobilize, Weapon Destroyed, Crew Shaken, Crew Stunned

Its worth noting as well that attacks that reduce armor facing normally do not reduce armor facing on a super heavy.

So models like Canoptek Scarabs cant hurt it.

...or so I was told...I don't own the book.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

jasper76 wrote:
As far as I was told,a glance and a pen remove a hull point. A roll of 6 on your Pen roll gives you 2 more hull points. But you can't Immobilize, Weapon Destroyed, Crew Shaken, Crew Stunned, or Explode a Super Heavy

Almost correct.

Glance and pen removes a hullpoint as normal. An explosion result removes D3 hull points in addition to the pen. You cannot Immobilize, Weapon Destroyed, Crew Shaken, Crew Stunned

Right, sorry...forgot it was a D3. First time using these rules last night so its still new to me.

jasper76 wrote:
Its worth noting as well that attacks that reduce armor facing normally do not reduce armor facing on a super heavy.

So models like Canoptek Scarabs cant hurt it.

...or so I was told...I don't own the book.

That is true. But it's only permanent removals that don't work. Weapons that reduce armor temporarily (such as lances) work as normal.

Thanks. Maybe I should just shut up and let people who own the book answer, lol.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Thatguyoverthere11 wrote:
How do damage results transfer over? Can you immobilize an super heavy?

Also, the revenant only gets holofields if it moves... 1st turn drop pod should take it out if there are enough melta stern guard in it.

I play Blood Angels... 9 combimeltas with prescience

1) What do you mean?

2) No

3) Wrong. Holofields are always active. It just doesn't work as well if the Revenant holds still. 4+ to hit it again when it moves, 3+ when it doesn't.

I was asking if you could destroy a weapon or stun a Super Heavy. Someone already answered that though.

I thought I read that Holofields negate hits on a 4+ if the Titan moved during the last turn. So, if you go first or steal the initiative (5+ if you didn't bring a Titan, my main detachment is GK so I get a reroll from coteaz) then you should be able to drop in a drop pod and melta the titan on the first turn. Prescienced BA sternguards with combi-meltas should do the trick. Can the Eldar do anything to stop you short of bubble wrap? You should get 8 melta hits pretty much 6-8 pens depending on your rolls and on a 4+ you're dealing D3 hullpoints. Sounds like a turn 1 kill to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and let's not forget that you scatter a apocalyptic template. It's D in the center so you could lose your melta unit (totally worth it) or it could scatter and destroy some more of their army!

No, not exactly. What happens if that you have to hit it, and if it moves, you have to roll a 4+ per hit due to holo fields. If it hasn't moved, then all you need is a 3+

It's a roll made by the firing player, not by the Eldar player, and it doesn't work like a save.

Oh really? So let's say a meltagun wielding space marine shoots at a Revenant. He rolls a 3+ to hit, then must roll another 3+ to get past the holofield, then rolls to pen on a 2D6 and then goes to damage?

yep. If it didn't move.

If it did move he has to roll a 3+ to hit, then must roll a 4+ to get past the holofield, then the roll for pen, and then damage.

This is why Eldar titans are ridiculous. It's only AV12-12-10 with no air defense, but that hardly matters when it can move up to 36" a turn and pummel up to two of your units with Titan Killer weapons.

Right now my GK/BA 'min bodies' list has evolved a lot since my 9 model iteration. It looks like this.

Coteaz
Vindicaire
Psifleman Dread
3 henchmen
3 henchmen
Dreadknight w/ personal teleporter, heavy incinerator, sword
Dreadknight w/ personal teleporter, heavy incinerator, sword
Dreadknight w/ personal teleporter, heavy incinerator, sword
1 Void Shield Generator with 3x shields

Lvl 1 BA Librarian with prescience and combi-melta
9 Sternguard w/combi meltas in a drop pod
5 scouts with cloaks and sniper rifles

I feel like it has the tools to take on anything right now. It would struggle against some of the deathstar lists but I'm confident that my vindicaire could take out the key characters to take apart the combos.

10 melta shots with rerolls
9 hits
6 that make it past holofields (if I go first) 4.5 if I don't
against AV 12 you have a 1 in 12 chance of failing to do anything and a 1 in 8 chance of glancing. We'll say 4 pens go through in all cases.

on a 4+ you do D3 hull points. 2D3 hull points is average of 4 plus two others is 6. You're down to 3. Any turbo-penetrator hits will also hit most of the time (especially when prescienced). We'll say you do 2/3rds of a hit (.5 if you go second) on average you roll a 14 so we'll just go with .5 hits in all cases because I'm too lazy to count all the combinations. That means 1 in 2 hits does another hull point, 1 in 4 does D3 hull points.

The psiflemen will hit with 3, do 2 or 1.5 after holos, we'll just say 1 hull point.


Roughly, very roughly, I can do 8 hull points to it in a turn. That doesn't kill it, but you can be sure that the revenant would be pretty uneasy about it's likelihood of going another round.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And afterward, 3 of its D-weapon templates would be negated on my shields.

I think you should count on opponent's deploying their titan in a far corner with some of their minimum size units acting as "DP blockers" (ie deploy ~5" from the titan spaced out so you cannot land the pod between them and the titan). This leaves you in the unenviable position of doing little to no damage turn 1 with large number of juicy targets.

BTW at 1750+ pts 3 void shields are normally going to absorb some chaff shots not the D weapons. I would not count on them to stop the revenant especially when the revenant can move 36" a turn. His movement is actually higher than your weapon ranges. You might want to think about modeling the void shields to block LoS for the dread knights and perhaps adding some defensive melta to the henchmen might help. Honestly such expensive dreadknights will probably struggle in the new D environment.

Question: are Super Heavies/Gargantuan Creatures subject to morale tests?
Like, say, if they are forced to take one and end up failing it, do they flee like everything else does?

Well they are all fearless.

and SH are vehicles...

Anrakyr the traveller is a pretty funny HQ choice against superheavies. On a 3+ you can shoot with it like it was your own, and you can get a re-roll for that with a Chronotek. Additionally, if you have Anrakyr in an army with an allied superheavy of your own, you can shoot twice with it every turn, since allies of convenience count as enemy units. Games will only last one turn too so that's a bonus for some people.

Allies of Convenience count as enemy units that you can't target. So yeah, no luck with double-firing. =P

Corollax wrote:
Allies of Convenience count as enemy units that you can't target. So yeah, no luck with double-firing. =P

Well, atleast in an allied Warhound vs. Warhound battle you can first shoot with the enemy Warhound at his own troops and then kill the enemy titan with your own

Well, sure. Puppet Master also lets you do this, but does so after a successful psychic test and failed Deny the Witch instead of on a flat 3+. I think Puppet Master also has longer range.

Just keep in mind the limitations of your firing arcs.