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Hey guys, first post!

I'm a CSM player (running emperor's children - rapture battalion) and totally a casual player not like I could bring anything overpowered anyways. I'm gonna be playing a friendly game, 1850 points in the next few weeks with a mate who runs orks. We both agreed that he could bring a stompa cause we're just playing for fun but I've never actually faced one before.

What are its capabilities? What's the best way to take it down? I don't have any knights nor do I bring in allies - My options to face this are based on the models I have:

Fist of the Gods formation (3 predators - annihilator pattern)

6 Oblits (don't remember the formation w/double shooting)

Combi-meltas on deepstriking terminators

meltas on bikes

x4 Autocannon Havocs

Blastmasters

Obviously don't know what mission we will be playing - is it better to ignore it completely and focus on taking out his Ork Boyz and sitting on objectives? Putting together 1850 of Chaos, w/Rapture Battalion, Chaos Warband and possibly the Fist of the Gods formation because of the Lascannons.. can also put in a Heldrake terror pack (2 heldrakes) if I decide to go after his mobs instead.

Any thoughts? Anyone actually field a stompa in games? how do you play them?

thanks,

Take the Cult of Destruction (this is the one with the Oblitirators) are good enough) as an Ironhands detachment which also gives them the Tank Hunter special rule.
This should be enough to strip quite a lot of hull points from the Stompa per turn.
Include the Fists of the Gods and you might down it in one turn.

The main thing the Stompa excels at is killing clumped groups of infantry really quickly. The Deth Kannon is a 7'' diameter S10 AP1 massive blast that tends to make a mess of everything it hits. The Supa Gatler can fire 2D6 high strength AP3 shots at multiple units a turn, but if I recall correctly its only 24'' range. There is a chance it runs out of ammunition each turn. Other than there are some generally unreliable S8 AP3 large pie plates it can chuck out that with the abysmal Ork BS tend to go all over the place.

So in terms of shooting, it poses a moderate threat to your Predators with its Deth Kannon if they're closely grouped together, and otherwise will delete most of the Marine infantry it can see that is within range. So make sure that whatever you do, you minimise the number of infantry it can see until it goes down, whether that means hiding them in metal boxes or putting them in reserve or just putting them out of LOS if terrain is dense.

The melee weapon obviously is strength D and the Stompa moves 12'' a turn, so it'll pretty much outright destroy any vehicle it touches in melee and mince any elite melee units. Thereotically you could tarpit it with 20+ fearless Cultists with a Dark Apostle/Lord attached but that wouldn't be very efficient and there's the problem of getting into melee and not getting your guys shot to pieces first. Against lots of infantry, the Stompa mainly relies on the Stomp mechanic to dish out lots of S6 hits or just remove clumps of infantry at a time. If you did go the tarpit route, remember to make sure the IC is at the back of the Cultist mob so he doesn't get stomped out of existence.

You shouldn't have much trouble just focusing its hull points down in 2-3 turns with 3 Predator Annihilators and 6 Oblits. If you want to kill it in 1-2 turns, the Meltacide Terminators on top of the Preds and Oblits are a good bet. I wouldn't bother with the Bikes unless the terrain is really dense and you can reliably keep them out of sight. The Autocannon havocs can only scratch the paintwork with S7. If you do take Havocs, take some ablative bodies at least so the Stompa doesn't delete them right away with its S8 AP3 missile pie plates by bad luck.

That's assuming though that he doesn't take a Kustom Force Field Big Mek which gives the Stompa and everything around it a 5+ invulnerable, which might make it a little harder to kill. Generally though, anyone who says you can afford to focus on objectives is lying through their teeth, focus it down and kill it, don't try ignore it, it can do a lot of damage and has a fair amount of mobility.

One of the big things to be aware of with a Stompa is if they load it up full of meks to spam repairs from the inside to keep it chugging along. A big mek with KFF inside with 2 loota/burna units (3 of each unit being a mek boy) and 2 non slot meks joining the group can give 9 5+ repair attempts plus the grot riggers giving IWND. Ignoring a Stompa can be costly as it chugs along kicking the gak out of things and slapping on more hull points if you fail to nuke it down quickly.

Stompas really suck, if you face them you can easily ignore them as they cost half (or even more) the ork army so the remaining 800-900 points of orks should be quite weak and once you decimate them the orks would be in trouble, even with the stompa.

It has 12 HP and usually some meks and/or grots that can repair it every turn, but it has only two valuable weapons, one is a single blast that is massive and s10 ap1 but still a single blast that doesn't ignore cover. The second one is a machine gun that fires a lot (with bs2, so many misses) but there are high chances to get out of ammo for the rest of the game. Other than that it has a D close combat weapon but it's quite easy to avoid contact with a walker that only moves 6 inches.

For 770 points stock you should be happy if you face a stompa

Anyway meltas are stompa's worst enemy, spam some on bikers and maybe some deepstriking terminators, but be aware that they could not repay you.

Chase down the rest of the army and play objectives instead.

It also depends what kind of stompa he's bringing. If he's bringing a stock stompa, it's not really that scary outside of close combat. It's widely seen as underpowered and overpriced and as Vankraken mentioned, the only way it really works okay is if you have a dedicated unit(s) inside to repairing all the lost HP's throughout the game.

If it's a kustom stompa, you'll have to be a lot more careful since he can take two arms' worth of bursta guns, which are 7" strength D blasts, amongst other things like the deff arsenal (3D6 S9 AP3 shots, with D3 supa rokkits) or the belly gun.

The most consistent way I've lost stompas is in close combat. 4 attacks at I1, so walkers (maulerfiends especially), or even chainfist terminators, will do a ton of damage quickly.

Trying to plink them down at range, outside of some really impressive or lucky ranged capacity, isn't going to work, depending on how cheesy he is feeling. Because it's possible, and not too difficult, to fill stompas with meks for repair rolls and a 5 or 4++ ranged save.

So, I'd honestly try rolling in with some heavy hitting melee units and try your luck. That's how I take out imperial knights most times as orks, and that with no fearless, no invluns.

And again, stompas are I1, so youre swinging at the same time as chainfists, and going first with anything heavier.

lots of good ideas, thanks for the replies. We're not playing competitive and I don't believe my friend will be tossing big meks into the stompa so I don't have to worry about kustom force fields or repairs. Its his first battle using the stompa as well so he'll be learning about it as much as I will. Obviously don't want to be wiped out on the first turn so need to make good use of cover and hidden units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
lots of good ideas, thanks for the replies. We're not playing competitive and I don't believe my friend will be tossing big meks into the stompa so I don't have to worry about kustom force fields or repairs. Its his first battle using the stompa as well so he'll be learning about it as much as I will. Obviously don't want to be wiped out on the first turn so need to make good use of cover and hidden units on my part

If he's bringing a stock stompa, just kill the crap out of it with shooting - For its cost, the Stompa is incredibly fragile. It's got a lot of hull points, but no real defense, and it's too big to ever reliably get cover. If he has a KFF and a bunch of meks for repair, then it becomes harder to kill, but he's also looking at a pricetag of well over 1000 points.

It has a decent amount of firepower, but nothing overwhelmingly good, or even particularly cost-effective.

Point-for-point, you can *easily* kill it with Tri-las Predators, thanks to its mediocre armor. I've seen one killed by a slightly-above-average-rolling Dreadnought. In Close Combat, it has terrible initiative, so if you have access to high-init high-strength attacks, just obliterate it before it can swing.

Plus, if it's his first game, he'll probably think it's invincible and play super aggressive with it, which is a bad idea.

For reference, I killed an enemy stompa once with 3 deff dreads. If I can with dreads, I'm sure you can find a way with CSM.

Whenever i run a stompa, I load it with lootas, meks, and a KFF

Actually, since he's only I1, Terminators with Chainfists could probably beat him. For 570 points, you can get 8 of them in a Land Raider Crusader, and that's generally considered to be one of the dumbest things you can do - Terminators in a Land Raider are awful. Even so, it'll obliterate a Stompa when you charge.

That's 24 attacks on the charge, 12 hits at S8 vs Front Armor... 13, I think? So an 83.33% chance of a Hull Point, with 72.22% of the time it being a Pen.

10 HP directly, 8.67 chances to get an Explodes (on a 6) for an average of 2.89 more HP, or one dead Stompa.

Easy answer: Focus his other units and move around it. It only has limited anti-armor and most anti-armor in the game is a threat to it, so just keep your tank killers away from it until you can concentrate on either a win through objectives or a kill on the thing. Seriously though, stompas are not that great.

 JNAProductions wrote:
That's 24 attacks on the charge, 12 hits at S8 vs Front Armor... 13, I think? So an 83.33% chance of a Hull Point, with 72.22% of the time it being a Pen.

10 HP directly, 8.67 chances to get an Explodes (on a 6) for an average of 2.89 more HP, or one dead Stompa.

On top of this, the Stompa has minimal damage output he can bring against them. His 4 attacks will get 2 hits and kill 1 Terminator, (A 5/6th chance to wound and a 5+ invuln means 1.1 wounds, it's actually slightly higher because of the chance of a 6 on the D weapon chart, but only slightly,) and then the Stomps will either kill 3 Terminators per 6 roll or bounce ineffectually off the armor - Assuming he gets a 6 on the Stomp roll, that only kills half the Terminators, leaving the other 4 to tie him up in CC and kill him next turn if they didn't finish him off.