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So my son is playing his first one on one game in a couple of weeks. It's the siege of vraks mission where he's going to be behind a terrain fortification/wall defense with two quad guns on auto fire. He's allowed to bring 1750 points and the attacker, an IG player has 2300 points to spend. Mind you the defensive wall with quad guns is not part of his FoC, which is why he's starting with 1750.

He's got at his disposal:

30 CSM
35 cultist with a dark apostle
15 chosen
4 helbrutes
Terminator lord
5 terminators
5-6 havocs
3 obliterators
3 mutilators
1 Heldrake
2 predators
1 vindicator
1 maulerfiiend
1 forgefiend
10 warp talons
5 raptors
1 warpsmith
5 possessed marines
1 demon prince
6 marine bikers, 1 lord biker
1 Land raider.
1 Aegis defense line, 2 if he uses my ultra marines theme one.
1 chaos Bastion, 2 if he uses my ultramarines themed one

With 2 weeks I could get him a couple of things if he's missing something. I just don't know what kind of army for him to build to defend this wall.

His opponent usually has about 3 basilisks and brings several variants of leman russ'. We've never played against him but he's a regular at our local store.

Any advice on a list and the Tactics to use on a defensive strategy would be great.

As far as rules go, everything is normal apart from the wall and quad guns. Like reserves, night fighting ect.

Thanks

You're gonna have to explain what weapons are on everything. That'll make a big difference.

He's other proxies or has magnetized weapons

Do you have the BL supplement? The anti-vehicle artifact could really bust a massive hole in a mech-heavy Guard list.

First the missions being used is a pretty strange one to use in a non Apoc game. I assume this is one of the assault on gate X missions. These missions are balanced using the strategic assets and titans to balance the forces better. Due to this your son will be going into this with a bit of a disadvantage unless the terrain has more effects and upgrades than indicated.

This is not going to be easy. The mission is essentially ~150 pts of fortifications that are actually working against your son in a basic strategic level. Your son will not be able to out gun an imperial guard force. Therefore he is going to have to milk the LoS blocking wall (it is LoS blocking right? the terrain in the mission you referenced is meant to be) and use the IG's poor forward scoring abilities against them to keep the objective.

Is the objectives/victory conditions 1 objective which is the gate and first blood, line breaker, and warlord?

Do you have any idea whether this is going to be a gunlines, mechvet, aircav, or allied SM guard player? I wouldn't normally tailor a list but when playing at essentially a 500 pts deficit I think a little tailoring could be alright.

Is escalation, stronghold assault, and/or dataslates being used? Does your son have the black legion supplement or Be'Lakor model/dataslate?

Do you know if the other guy runs flyers and/or how many? I have a list written up that might work, but it has piss poor AA.

As far as I know there will not be escalation rules. I could always ask. And the attacker, if it's the guy I think will be playing does have one flyer. A vandetta.

How about something like this? The idea is to let the opponent waste their firepower against the wall (I am assuming the opposing army is not an all artillery army) until turn 2 when you jump the wall and drop you DS reserves on the opponent. I am not sure if your son has an ADL or bastion for a comms relay and if he has access to the black legion supplement.

Chaos Space Marines Codex (Primary Detachment)
+ HQ +
* Chaos Lord (140pts) Bike, Mark of Nurgle, Lightning Claw, Power Fist
* Daemon Prince (340pts) 3x Mastery Level, Power Armour, The Black Mace, Tzeentch, Wings
+ Troops +
* Chaos Cultists (50pts)
* Chaos Cultists (50pts)
* Chaos Space Marines (80pts) 4x Chaos Space Marine, Flamer
+ Fast Attack +
* Chaos Bikers (186pts) 6x Chaos Biker, Mark of Nurgle, 2x Meltagun
* Heldrake (170pts) Baleflamer
+ Heavy Support +
* Obliterator (76pts) Mark of Nurgle
* Obliterator (76pts) Mark of Nurgle
* Obliterator (76pts) Mark of Nurgle

The Black Legion Supplement (Allied Detachment)
+ HQ +
* Sorcerer (170pts) 3x Mastery Level, Last Memory of the Yuranthos, Veterans of the Long War, Terminator Armour
+ Elites +
* Chaos Terminators (160pts) Veteran of the Long War, 3x combi-melta (or plasma) and PW (mace is good) Terminators, Terminator Champion w/ combi-same as others and PW
+ Troops +
* Chaos Cultists (50pts)
+ Fortification +
* Imperial Bastion (95pts) Comms Relay, 4x Heavy Bolters

The great part of this list is that the CSM lord, biker unit, DP, CSM, and 1 cultist (in bastion) squads can all start on the table and be relatively safe as your son can abuse the LoS blocking very tough fortress wall. Then the comms relay can get his sorcerer+Terminators in on turn 2 and hopefully the oblits and heldrake will also come on. His last unit of cultists should be kept in reserves as long as possible so they can walk on either onto an objective or into the bastion if the other cultist squad has already moved out. The coordinated assault of the DP, bikers+lord, oblits, heldrake, and chaos sorcerer+terminators means the opponent has to try and deal with all of those threats immediately as any one of them will deal massive damage over the game. The sorcerer manifests Last Memory of the Yuranthos using 3 warp charges for an 18" nova dealing 2D6 S4 hits (ignore cover to boot) to any unit within it. It also makes the units take a blinding test. This has become my standard response to IG foot base gunlines as it can cripple them with all the blinding and morale checks from casualties. The only bad thing about this list is the mental shock of losing half your army turns 1 and 2, but if you can get over that then the remaining forces will start making short work of the opponent. I have had good experiences with a similar list but with oblits instead of terminators. It has worked well against pretty much any list so far but the positioning of your models to get the perfect safety margin for your DS can be very tricky. Assuming the IG player doesn’t show up with vendetta spam or most his points in barrage style artillery this list should have a shot at winning.

If you can proxy Be'Lakor a much better list can be made, he is just such a big tool box.

 ansacs wrote:
How about something like this? The idea is to let the opponent waste their firepower against the wall (I am assuming the opposing army is not an all artillery army) until turn 2 when you jump the wall and drop you DS reserves on the opponent. I am not sure if your son has an ADL or bastion for a comms relay and if he has access to the black legion supplement.

Chaos Space Marines Codex (Primary Detachment)
+ HQ +
* Chaos Lord (140pts) Bike, Mark of Nurgle, Lightning Claw, Power Fist
* Daemon Prince (340pts) 3x Mastery Level, Power Armour, The Black Mace, Tzeentch, Wings
+ Troops +
* Chaos Cultists (50pts)
* Chaos Cultists (50pts)
* Chaos Space Marines (80pts) 4x Chaos Space Marine, Flamer
+ Fast Attack +
* Chaos Bikers (186pts) 6x Chaos Biker, Mark of Nurgle, 2x Meltagun
* Heldrake (170pts) Baleflamer
+ Heavy Support +
* Obliterator (76pts) Mark of Nurgle
* Obliterator (76pts) Mark of Nurgle
* Obliterator (76pts) Mark of Nurgle

The Black Legion Supplement (Allied Detachment)
+ HQ +
* Sorcerer (170pts) 3x Mastery Level, Last Memory of the Yuranthos, Veterans of the Long War, Terminator Armour
+ Elites +
* Chaos Terminators (160pts) Veteran of the Long War, 3x combi-melta (or plasma) and PW (mace is good) Terminators, Terminator Champion w/ combi-same as others and PW
+ Troops +
* Chaos Cultists (50pts)
+ Fortification +
* Imperial Bastion (95pts) Comms Relay, 4x Heavy Bolters

The great part of this list is that the CSM lord, biker unit, DP, CSM, and 1 cultist (in bastion) squads can all start on the table and be relatively safe as your son can abuse the LoS blocking very tough fortress wall. Then the comms relay can get his sorcerer+Terminators in on turn 2 and hopefully the oblits and heldrake will also come on. His last unit of cultists should be kept in reserves as long as possible so they can walk on either onto an objective or into the bastion if the other cultist squad has already moved out. The coordinated assault of the DP, bikers+lord, oblits, heldrake, and chaos sorcerer+terminators means the opponent has to try and deal with all of those threats immediately as any one of them will deal massive damage over the game. The sorcerer manifests Last Memory of the Yuranthos using 3 warp charges for an 18" nova dealing 2D6 S4 hits (ignore cover to boot) to any unit within it. It also makes the units take a blinding test. This has become my standard response to IG foot base gunlines as it can cripple them with all the blinding and morale checks from casualties. The only bad thing about this list is the mental shock of losing half your army turns 1 and 2, but if you can get over that then the remaining forces will start making short work of the opponent. I have had good experiences with a similar list but with oblits instead of terminators. It has worked well against pretty much any list so far but the positioning of your models to get the perfect safety margin for your DS can be very tricky. Assuming the IG player doesn’t show up with vendetta spam or most his points in barrage style artillery this list should have a shot at winning.

If you can proxy Be'Lakor a much better list can be made, he is just such a big tool box.

I believe the opponent will have 1 Vandetta, and he brings 3-4 Basilisks. Then about 4-5 different variants of leman Russ'. I say 3-4 and 4-5 because I don't know the IG codex and can't remember how their tank/vehicle units are built.

Your list is very interesting. Probably too much to ask but in buying the BL supplement, what are we gaining from that and what should he be looking for?

How old is your son and how long has he been playing?

If he's young and new, I'd focus only on running infantry, and trying to cut down on the number of different types. CSM doesn't hold the line very well, but is rather an assaulty army which means, on defense, they're a counterassault army. I'd take the cultists to form a screen and then take some elites-become-troops units to hide behind them, with some oblits or terminators in reserve to deepstrike on to problem spots.

In that way, you only have to deal with a pretty small set of rules.

If your son is older or more experienced, then I'd still say much of what I just said, but you can start including some vehicles and stuff with more rules.

Johnnytorrance wrote:
I believe the opponent will have 1 Vandetta, and he brings 3-4 Basilisks. Then about 4-5 different variants of leman Russ'. I say 3-4 and 4-5 because I don't know the IG codex and can't remember how their tank/vehicle units are built.

Your list is very interesting. Probably too much to ask but in buying the BL supplement, what are we gaining from that and what should he be looking for?

The IG codex can run squads of 1-3 basilisks or leman russ tanks per each HS slot. The opponent could take 3 basilisks and 6 leman russ tanks in 3 HS slots. If the opponent take an ally to get prescience then that would hurt this list somewhat. However if they take any leman russ tanks then your son will probably be okay. The real nasty one would be manticores. The S10 can ID your daemon prince. Just make sure your son knows to put his DP and biker units fully spaced out and flush with the wall. This way each earthshaker that hits gets 1-2 models only and each miss has a ~30% chance to scatter to a different level and leave the unit unharmed. If you can put some ceilings behind the wall you can effectively make your units hiding under them invulnerable.

The Last Memory of the Yuranthos is the only thing you need to know from the black legion supplement. If you google it you will get everything but the points value. It is in my opinion one of the best and few answers to turtling in the CSM army. Without it you might have difficulties with any foot horde he brings. If he is a mechvet player though (which he could be) then the last memory won't be that effective. However you still have 3 rolls on telepathy and 4 warp charges to use.

black mace will wreck his troops. Get a Slaanesh prince and some spawn, start running.

Maulerfiends. The scare vehicle list, their fast, and they take punishment well. 3 Maulers running at him turn 1 is a target priority nightmare. Add a running DP with spawn.

Now throw in Nurgle bikers (for T6) or Slaanesh bikers (T5 and FnP). Thats 5 units running at him on turn one.

Ally in Belakor. Thats 6.

3 units of 3x Termicide squads (thats bare bones with 3x combis) add a turn 2-3 punch.

Heldrakes, cultist, and Oblits should fill the rest up. Add 1-2 Aegis with maximum Oblits (Allies) for heavy fire.

The idea is, don't play into the IG strong suit by turtling. Hit him in the mouth, get inside the minimum range of the Basilisk so those pie plates start hitting his giant blobs, and force all his firepower into your big guys and let the cultist spawn HB and QuadGuns at the fliers while the 9 Oblits do work. 9 combi meltas alone will pop most of those LR's on turn 2-3 so you should be rolling him by turn 5.

EDIT: Heldrake Spam is effective against everyone. 4 is 680 points. Add 500 for Belakor and 3 units of cultist. Now flesh out with HQ's and Spawn/bikes. It's your spam, eat it when YOU need it!

ansacs wrote:Without it you might have difficulties with any foot horde he brings.

But we're talking about CSM here. You don't need fancy wargear to handle a guard foot horde. That massive pile of bolters, chainswords, and power armor will probably suffice, and that's without getting into cardboard composters like blind fury lords, berzerkers, noise marines, or huron or any of a big pile of things that can make their way into a normal CSM list.

 Ailaros wrote:
But we're talking about CSM here. You don't need fancy wargear to handle a guard foot horde. That massive pile of bolters, chainswords, and power armor will probably suffice, and that's without getting into cardboard composters like blind fury lords, berzerkers, noise marines, or huron or any of a big pile of things that can make their way into a normal CSM list.

Which is fine until you take into account closing a minimum of 24" with basilisk and battle cannon shells on your head. If you spam CSM then you will either walk 24" shooting every turn and you will take 4 turns to do so or you will run every turn and it will take you ~3 turns to get into CC. If you shoot then you are taking 50% more casualties on average than the ADL footguard and have half their numbers. If you run then you might charge a single bubble wrap unit on turn 3 (hopefully) if the rolls all go above average for you. Then you still get pummeled again turn 4.

Foot rush with slow non fearless infantry doesn't work in 6ed. Foot rush with slow fearless infantry only works against the unprepared and with some significant luck. Perhaps with a bunch of rhinos he could flood the opponent's board, but without ATSKNF and considering that it is 1750 pts versus 2300 pts that is very suicidal. With Be'Lakor a landraider rush style list could work but there is no Be'Lakor. This is the only list which can turn the opponent's large number of resources partially against them as they can effectively get into CC a single turn after they are in LoS and the last memory will deal more damage the more MSU the opponent goes (therefore having large numbers of tarpitting units will work actively against the opponent).

Anyways that comment was specifically about the list I proposed which has a relatively small number of elite units. Large numbers of anti infantry fire power and plentiful tarpitting units is not what that list wants to deal with.

ansacs wrote:Which is fine until you take into account closing a minimum of 24" with basilisk and battle cannon shells on your head. Foot rush with slow non fearless infantry doesn't work in 6ed.

Well, firstly...

Johnnytorrance wrote:It's the siege of vraks mission where he's going to be behind a terrain fortification/wall defense with two quad guns on auto fire. He's allowed to bring 1750 points and the attacker, an IG player has 2300 points to spend.

... he doesn't need to. He's playing a hold the line mission where he's the defender. He doesn't have to close range with anything.

But even if he did need to advance, it's still possible to make a go of it against foot guard with fearless infantry, and not just if their opponents are "unprepared". Foot guard has always had serious force concentration problems that CSM (being an army great with force concentration) can easily exploit. Even at anti-basilisk displacement, you're still talking about CSM units coming into contact with a fraction of their points cost in guardsmen most of the time, as my foot guard have found to their detriment on more than one occasion against plague marine armies. You also don't need to be THAT lucky either, as most of the problems of foot lists in 6th ed don't really apply that much to Sv3+ or better armies. Plus, there are support units like deepstriking terminators or obliterators that can do well to really hammer key places on the board, even if the dudes on foot take casualties.

And this is still in the realm of a general CSM list. If you build your list on purpose to work this way, then you definitely don't need to be strictly lucky to do fine with it, especially against foot guard. If the CSM player shows up with huron and 2 units of 20 khorne berzerkers with rerollable charge ranges, it's going to be pretty hard for the foot guard player to avoid a turn 2 charge. From berzerkers. No foot guard player is going to welcome that as an easy challenge. Against mech guard you'd even get some krak grenade kills in.

Too bad that it's not the other way around, really, and that the CSM player isn't the attacker. Those quad guns would be pointless and the points disparity would be brutal.

 Ailaros wrote:
Well, firstly... ... he doesn't need to. He's playing a hold the line mission where he's the defender. He doesn't have to close range with anything.

His options really are;
1) hide and hope to countercharge with the game depending entirely on whether the IG player brought enough AT to pop the walls and enough barrage/etc. to clear the troops that can move to the objective. This is not a fun game as it is CSM hiding like scared dogs.
2) advance across 24" to take the fight to the IG player. Which is my scenario as in my first post I stipulated that my ideas will be about how to make a game of it.

 Ailaros wrote:
But even if he did need to advance, it's still possible to make a go of it against foot guard with fearless infantry, and not just if their opponents are "unprepared". Foot guard has always had serious force concentration problems that CSM (being an army great with force concentration) can easily exploit. Even at anti-basilisk displacement, you're still talking about CSM units coming into contact with a fraction of their points cost in guardsmen most of the time, as my foot guard have found to their detriment on more than one occasion against plague marine armies. You also don't need to be THAT lucky either, as most of the problems of foot lists in 6th ed don't really apply that much to Sv3+ or better armies. Plus, there are support units like deepstriking terminators or obliterators that can do well to really hammer key places on the board, even if the dudes on foot take casualties.

And this is still in the realm of a general CSM list. If you build your list on purpose to work this way, then you definitely don't need to be strictly lucky to do fine with it, especially against foot guard. If the CSM player shows up with huron and 2 units of 20 khorne berzerkers with rerollable charge ranges, it's going to be pretty hard for the foot guard player to avoid a turn 2 charge. From berzerkers. No foot guard player is going to welcome that as an easy challenge. Against mech guard you'd even get some krak grenade kills in.

Your berzerker infiltrators can work and do work reasonably well. (not so well if servo skulls were taken, but that is another story) I will give you this though it doesn't have anything to do with the current thread as huron was not listed as a model option and neither were berzerkers or plague marines. Those three options can actually do some reasonably effective foot slogger lists (probably not effective enough to handle 1750 vs 2300 pts) and with huron infiltrating them they can be entirely feasible in a normal balanced game. Against such a stacked deck footslogging ~24" is not going to cut it. The opponent has enough points to flood his board with 137 conscripts which would not even allow you to deep strike within plasma range of his tanks and still take an army of the same points as you. With my idea at least when you come down you have a decent shot to cripple anything he leaves exposed and keep him in his deployment zone so he cannot move onto the objective.

 Ailaros wrote:
Too bad that it's not the other way around, really, and that the CSM player isn't the attacker. Those quad guns would be pointless and the points disparity would be brutal.

This mission would be so much better like that. The IG could make excellent use of huge walls and the CSM would actually need a handicap to account for them.

It is actually really difficult to pinpoint which mission this is from the vraks series as there are 5+ assault on breach/gate/X where a "Chaos" force (actually a renegade guard force mixed with CSM usually) defends a "wall" against an attacking guard force. They all are balanced by the Chaos force having plentiful long range renegade guard support, the IG taking 1/3 to 1/2 their points in infantry assault units so they cannot just sit back and shoot, and a variety of Apoc style stratagems to pull.

And a bunch of slathering hordes of chaos charging up the hill as a handful of guardsmen and artillery desperately tried to fend them off would be much more interesting as well.

I guess it's just unfortunate that the mission is the way it is. I mean, imagine the same scenario where a green tide ork player was defending the hill against a tau player. That would feel as wrong as it would be unfortunate to watch.

I wonder if there isn't a way that things could get reversed? As it is, any game where the attacker is guard artillery and the defender is armed to the teeth with S4 bolters and chainswords is going to be a game where the latter merely displace and hide in cover from the former and hope to last the game out, as said.

Of course, you could also get around this if the guard player wasn't playing a gunline. Just another way gunlines ruin 40k, I suppose.

Well to be fair it might be just what Tzeentch wanted

The Tau one would be hilarious as it would be one step forward and one step back all game. Actually in that scenario unless the Tau go farsight bomb I would give it to the ork lootas.

We cannot really be sure that this won't be a good game. The IG player could be a good guy and run a power blobb, etc. In fact that is why I recommended the list I did. Whatever style of IG army the other player uses (except aircav) that list will make a game of it. I cannot promise a win but I can promise it will end with a CSM assault on IG positions.

You could make a pretty good batrep of it actually...The imperial guard assault force moves into position to begin bombarding the fortress walls but the fortress is seemingly abandoned...suddenly the forces of chaos spring their trap and the IG forces are encircled by rapidly deployed hidden forces from the fortress and forces deployed straight from the warp. Kind of a cool mental image.

Lol.

"OFFENSIVE defense? I hate to say it sir, but that seems to be an oxymoron. I mean, we've got them holed up in their castle... you know... defending. I may not be a 'military expert' like you are, sir, but I'm pretty sure... pretty sure you're completely full of... uhh... hey, what's that sound?"

I'm not rich guys, but I will buy him a few things if he needs them. If he could use some plague marines, how many?

I've even thought about getting Cypher if it makes sense.

You think he needs a second Drake?

Honestly he should be fine unless he plays a game at a 500 pts handicap. Your sons collection is a pretty nice one if not very focused toward any certain play style. Out of curiosity was that your old collection? It sounds very well put together and is fairly extensive collection.

If you want to power up your sons collection here are the things I would get and the order I would do it.
These models will work with any play style and will enable new play styles as well.
+Be'Lakor Model + Digital Dataslate (4+37.25 usd)
+1 more helldrake

This is more for a MTO style list like I wrote. The idea is to come at your opponent hard and fast and be knocking your opponent on his heels turn 2. Also I like the oblit models and the alternative models you can get.
+3-6 more oblits
+5 or so spawn

Perhaps typhus or huron could help but they set your playstyle if you take them. Huron is going to make you take power armour units of relatively large size to infiltrate. Typhus will make you want to take a bunch of zombie cultists. Your son has a nice collection so he could do either.
BTW this is my usual typhus list http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/565224.page it can be pretty nasty if player right but the positioning of DS units is key.

If he wants to do the foot rush forward with power armour he probably would be better off with plague marines but those are very easy to convert with even minimal greenstuff or just gorilla glue skills from any power armour model. Though in this case I doubt it would work out well as the difference in points is such that closing in the traditional ways is more likely to end in complete annihilation than any close combat.

Just getting Be'Lakor alone into the list would enable strategies he could never use without him. A perfect example is I have started taking a landraider w/dirge singer, 9 berzerkers, and kharn. I hide Be'Lakor behind the land raider and use invisibility on it first turn. It keep a very nasty FMC out of LoS and once I pop smoke I have a land raider with 2+ cover. Be'Lakor is also an answer to MC that CSM normally have some difficulties with. This combined with the gauranteed full set of telepathy powers means when I close with a gunline turn 2 (and I have an excellent chance of doing so) I have 3 units which you do not want to be charge with and I probably shot you with your own punisher cannon.

Sorry I forgot to add a spell familiar to the chaos sorcerer. The spell familiar is absolutely necessary as if you fail the psyker test to use the nova it kills your sorcerer. The pts were under in the list anyways so it should be close.

BTW I would be interested in how the game goes and what your son ends up using. Good luck.