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Greetings fellows.
I am in a slight pickle here.

There seems to be that our next apoc game will probably include a C'Tan in one of the teams (might be mine, might not be) and for all I struggle, I cant seem to find a decent answer to it.

Between T9, FnP. 3+ armor, 4+ invul, the sniper/poison resistance and the fact he can potentially move 18" (and do a D "vector strike" on the go!) he is just very, very durable.

Now revenant, its easy in theory-throw anti-tank rounds at it, deepstike melta if possible.

This guy? no clear answer, and he packs a hell lot of firepower.

Any advice on the matter?
How to approach him? at all?

I'm playing Tau and Enclaves, but generic answers for other armies will be also welcomed. (I might have them on my side after all)

Any Destroyer weapons will make short work of him.

spam him with as much fire as possible. i would suggest something with alot of high str shots, dont worry about AP as much as forcing saves. that said, as tau - for the roughly 800 pts this guy costs you can bring:

LOTS of hammerheads with rail cannons. snipe off more then a few wounds and he will likley be a touch more careful with him. crisis suits with melta. they will have to be jumping away every turn, but should be able to handle it ok. riptides with ion accelerators can also put down some decent fire, as can rail rifle broadsides.

the trick is to focus all the fire you can on him, while trying to stay away from its craziness. but keep in mind he also has some long range blast type powers, so really all this depends on his loadout. personally just shoot him with everything you can thats str 8 or better.

Or get telepathy psykers that can use psychic shriek, I lost my C'tan to a unit of sanctioned psykers and a primaris psyker with the power. Granted he rolled 16 for the leadership test but on when you are Ld 2 from the sanctioned psykers you are going to take damage no matter how well he rolls

And Doom him if there are any eldar allies on your side.

I see your big problem, Tau lack long range strength 8. They have strength 7 in spades but higher strength weapons a lot more expensive and you get a lot less. So how about instead of spending a lot of hammerheads (You wont get more then 5 tops) you could spend a lot on missile sides, putting out a tremendous amount of strength 7 hits. Wounding on 6's you say? Answer, DarkStrider. If he is only T8 then he is much more manageable with mass strength 7 hits and fusion, you should be able to pick off quite a few wounds before he gets to Darkstrider if you protect him well enough.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
I see your big problem, Tau lack long range strength 8. They have strength 7 in spades but higher strength weapons a lot more expensive and you get a lot less. So how about instead of spending a lot of hammerheads (You wont get more then 5 tops) you could spend a lot on missile sides, putting out a tremendous amount of strength 7 hits. Wounding on 6's you say? Answer, DarkStrider. If he is only T8 then he is much more manageable with mass strength 7 hits and fusion, you should be able to pick off quite a few wounds before he gets to Darkstrider if you protect him well enough.

Thought of HYMP broadsides, wont work.

He can outrange them, so he just stands a bit further away for one turn, remove the troublesome squad, and moves on.



Spamming railheads...
MIGHT help, but I only have a pair of them.
Riptides, also only have one, and I didn't even build him yet. (shocking isnt it?) and he is an obvious go-to, but still he's note quite enough. (if he'll even be ready by then)
Rail broadsides? amusing, they never failed to disappoint me, so I have stopped even trying them, but they MIGHT help here.

Telepathy is a nice idea, I'll suggest it to my allies if I turn out against him.

How about lots of Sniper Kroot? They only wound him on 6's, but 6's are also rending. They won't absolutely wreck him, but even one squad with boosted BS or monster-hunter or twin-linked can put on a wound or two.

20 Kroot + a single markerlight hit (for BS 4) + a buff commander = ~1.83 wounds on the C'Tan. Same thing with a big unit of Sniper Drones.

The craziest thing about the C'tan is that despite being a bit vulnerable to shooting he's really small. The Trancendent C'tan model is smaller than the actual Nightbringer and Deceiver models, especially if you don't make him look like he's flying but just standing flat on the base.

Then I'm pretty sure he can hide completely out of line of sight behind a custom (not even oversized) Void Shield Generator fortification at the edge of his side of the table. From there he can move up 18" in the middle and throw 2 hellstorm Wave of Witherings on your army, basically winning the game.

Darkstrider only works with firewarriors and pathfinders so that wont help with the broadsides...

I recently used my Ctan in a battle against tau and tabled the tau in 5 turns almost singlehandedly, without taking a wound

this Ctan is gross and without a Strength D gun its going to hurt you

weight of fire seems to be only other way to take him down successfully

darkstrider with fireblade in a full squad of fire warriors can wound him on 6's tho, and thats not tooo bad... (fireblade for the extra shots because it would be the only unit of firewarriors that could hurt him)

Dont take this the wrong way, im not trying to insult you or your friends, but why would you even use GW's most blatant cash grabs in recent memory anyway. They did all of zero playtesting, and just wrote rules to sell models, saying its beer and pretzels, it aint gotta be balanced!

You will have alot less headaches without EITHER book as even stationary buildings with str d are just stupid.

Because he thought the model is cool and bought it before there were even rules out there. not all of us are WAAC, some of us just plop down cool looking models first, then try to figure out what on earth we do with them

And once we bought something, damn if hell we won't play it.

And I'm not going to back down from fighting against that monster, I just want to figure out how to do it properly.

shoot at it. ALOT lol

i mean thats what it comes down to, unless you have something that can take him in cc.

but essentially you need as much str 8 or higher as possible.

str 9 on 4+
str 8 wounds on 5+
str 7 on 6+

and worse from there. tau sources of str 7+

overcharge cyclic ion blaster, fusion, ion accelerator on over or nova, hev rail rifle, ion cannon,/rifle on overcharge, railguns and missile pods

so take as many of those, across as many units as you possible can.the ctan cant kill all those units at once, and combined firepower should help. if you have something that can dish out a high number of high str attacks and hold up to a round or 2 of CC with a garg creacture... then do so. but thats about it.

I'd say Eldar or space wolves would be fairly decent at dealing with this guy.
What kind of initiative does this guy have? If it's low enough a couple JotWW rune priests should be a pain for him to deal with.
A few squads of ML Long Fangs or ML armed Dark Reapers should put out enough S8 AP3 shots to put a dent in this guy, especially if accompanied by a Farseer with Doom or Guide.
Coupled with Telepathy, Mind War could also prove really nasty if you can get close enough.
I'm not familiar with Tau, though.

Wraithcannons, if you can get the wraithguard in close via a waveserpent, are also nasty. I don't have access to my eldar codex right now, but do those things still have their "remove the model from play" special rule?
Assuming he doesn't have any "ignore invulnerable save" shenanigans, a jetbike seer council with their multitude of witchblades, singing spears and rerollable invulnerable saves might be able to take him in cc.

You can't really deal with them without super heavies, but as other people have stated, D-weapons are your friend.

 somecallmeJack wrote:
You can't really deal with them without super heavies, but as other people have stated, D-weapons are your friend.

Well, if you wound the C'tan with two or three D weapons it will be dead. But there are not very many D weapons in the game.

If it'll make you feel better I can refrain from taking Wave of Withering and the super move powers.

Massed rending will really do a number on him. He only has 6 wounds.

Aftermath. wrote:
Massed rending will really do a number on him. He only has 6 wounds.

Well, I was surprised to see him with only 6 wounds. Nine would have been more appropriave.

Grav guns, lots of shots, wounds on 3`s, makes him I1 so you can bully him with jaws as well if you feel like it. Get a tau commander in there, and you are re-rolling everything as well.

A biker command squad with 5 grav + tau commander = about 6 wounds on the big fella.

Granted, with his 18" movement and 16" template, he outranges them, so it is probably better to simply bring many squads of bikers with gravguns and support them with some long range firepower that can pick off a wound or two along the way.

He also goes off like a nuke when he dies.

 Galorian wrote:
If it'll make you feel better I can refrain from taking Wave of Withering and the super move powers.

GHA!

when on earth do YOU actually look at dakka!?


Anyway, I5 means jaws is not a great idea.

D guns? lets assume we DONT have any (he's one of the few around here owning any superheavies ATM)


Grav guns? nice idea. I wonder if our marine players got enough.

Massed rending is also something I havn't thought of, but he would still have his invul, and the wounds will probably be 6es only.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Galorian wrote:
If it'll make you feel better I can refrain from taking Wave of Withering and the super move powers.

GHA!

when on earth do YOU actually look at dakka!?

I see all.

i dont think jaws works on gargantuan creatures anyway,... i think things that insta kill, remove from play etc do a random number of wounds instead.

It does D3 wounds, so not great. However, it is pretty decent in combination with grav guns to finish him off. With a bit of luck you can take him out with one bike squad and a rune priest

 wuestenfux wrote:

 somecallmeJack wrote:
You can't really deal with them without super heavies, but as other people have stated, D-weapons are your friend.

Well, if you wound the C'tan with two or three D weapons it will be dead. But there are not very many D weapons in the game.

I dunno, what about the baneblade variant with the D weapon? Shadowsword is it? I can never remember which is which. & That big new fortress thing can fire 2 D weapon blasts a turn. I think Sir Killalot strikes at D in melee unless Im mistaken. & what about those eldar titans everyone is pooing their pants over? Like I say, sure, if you dont have a superheavy you'll get mullered, but there are plenty of options if you want to play that game.

 wuestenfux wrote:

Aftermath. wrote:
Massed rending will really do a number on him. He only has 6 wounds.

Well, I was surprised to see him with only 6 wounds. Nine would have been more appropriave.

For his base cost, I was more surprised to see him with T9 and 8 attacks! That is Hierophant Bio-titan territory.

There is no shortcut against the C'tan, other than D weapons. You've just going to have to throw a lot of shots into him. All of you. With only 6W, you can take him out eventually.

BTW, if one side doesn't have any D-weapons, I recommend that the other side doesn't take them as well. It makes for a more fair (and fun) fight. I mean, they already have the advantage of the 3 strongest armies currently. Adding D's to the strong team will just make the game even more lopsided.

Evil Galorian don't take the Evil C'tan vs the poor Tau or else I'm going to accuse you to... The Reaper? or maybe H.B.M.C.? I'm sure someone else back in SB is going to care... ugh... .

 somecallmeJack wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

 somecallmeJack wrote:
You can't really deal with them without super heavies, but as other people have stated, D-weapons are your friend.

Well, if you wound the C'tan with two or three D weapons it will be dead. But there are not very many D weapons in the game.

I dunno, what about the baneblade variant with the D weapon? Shadowsword is it? I can never remember which is which. & That big new fortress thing can fire 2 D weapon blasts a turn. I think Sir Killalot strikes at D in melee unless Im mistaken. & what about those eldar titans everyone is pooing their pants over? Like I say, sure, if you dont have a superheavy you'll get mullered, but there are plenty of options if you want to play that game.

Indeed, its the Shadowsword. But it can fire only one D 5'' template per turn. The C'tan model is rather small so that the template may scatter wide enough to miss him.

pick up some macro cannons fortifications, vortex also works nice as a source of D options and can be taken as a strategem.