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So, I'm a Marine player that likes to field a lot of infantry (Think Battle Company). A few out of my last bunch of games have been pretty demoralizing as I've found myself getting picked aprt by stuff I can't seem to do anything against. After the most recent, and worst, of such games, I got stuck deep in one of those "why am I putting all my energy into something I can't even talk to girls/ well adjusted people about" kinda funks. I pulled myself out of the existential crisis by scouring the internet, and my rulebooks looking for counters, but I didn't really come up with much. The thinks that really give me trouble are:

-Swooping Flying Monstrous Creatures

-Summoning

-Flying Daemon Princes get behind me and take out my spc/hvy wpns with Vector Strike, and then summon 40 Daemonettes to tie up a huge amt of my dakka for pretty much the whole game.

So, I suppose I could take a Librarius Conclave, and go for Psychic Scourge, but The FDP could use it's mobility to keep out of the 24" long enough to Do a fair bit of conjuring. It would act as a deterrent to the Vector Strike if I spread the Conclave out and moved it up alongside my force, but all this hinges on rolling that power, and then I've got to bypass, manifesting the power, Deny the Witch, and not only beat the FDP's roll by 3, but also successfully roll his Summoning as the power to be removed... and really, at the end of the day, all a clever opponent would need to do to counter that counter would be to put all his resources into killing the Librarian with that power, and he can just keep on tarpitting my army with free daemons all day long. I can't help think there's got to be a better way.

Is there much else I can do other than shoot my whole army at it for the whole game, and possibly not kill it? And what if it's a Dakka Flyrant, and I just need to straight up kill the thing?

Need a good solution for these problems that folds nicely into a TAC list for pickup games/ campaigns. Ideas?

Have a look into nova psy powers and flamers (i play netties and hate flamers) for hoard control and fortifications like bunkers/bastions etc they can have anti air and be immune to vector striking (av14) and netties rending.
just a couple of ideas hope they help.

To be brutally honest, because your army list probably sucks against your opponents'. Space Marines have plenty of options to take out FMC's and Daemons alike.

A Gladius Strike Force should have no problem vs either of these threats if you kit it out correctly. Either go full barebones tacticals with as many TL HB Razorbacks as you can field while adding some shenanigans on the side - take your pick. A minimum Gladius will cost you 985 points with the 10th Company Task force as Aux, meaning you still have over 850 points to spend on smart choices for the rest of your army. Alternatively make it an Ironhands Gladius for 5+ IWND and kit the Razorbacks out with Las/Plas. Give your Tacticals special weapons, take a command squad and make a mini-Smashfucker star to wipe the floor with any ground chaff. 100+ bolter shots, 8+ lascannons and 16 Rapid Firing Plasmaguns should do the trick.

If that's not to your taste, the a simple CAD + a formation should do the trick as long as you bring the right tools for the job. Centurions (even the assault kind w/ Flamers), Thunderfire Cannons, Predators w/ Heavy Bolter Sponsons and Tacticals/Scouts all dish out a lot of shots. A couple of these units or a combination would take you a long way. Also Ironclad Dreadnoughts with Heavy Flamers, preferably in Drop Pods. If you're using Devastator squads you need at least 2-3 extra wounds and some good Chapter Tactics to go along with them. Also, don't be the guy who puts Plasma Cannons in his Tactical Squads or mixes Heavy Weapons in a Devastator team if you want to win a couple of games. On the other hand if you just want to play fluffy and that's your thing, well then you shouldn't be complaining in the first place...

Anyway, I know some of what I said might sound harsh. But I hope it helps.

Culexus assassin

- Shoot twin linked shots at FMC's, preferably ignores cover grav cannons if they're armoured, anything else if they're not. A pair of stormtalons should be able to put the hurt onto any FMC and you can assure their arrival on turn 2 every single game with a raptor wing.
- If he's summoning, you should have enough bolters to be the answer since either he's summoning 'letters or 'nettes and T3 5++ doesn't mean much to bolters or he's summoning horrors to summon more horrors, in which case charge them and kill via combat res.
- Don't leave your heavy/special weapons completely at the back where they can get vector struck.

As for being demoralising, you should be able to simply camp in your metal boxes and wait out the turn counter since you'll have more ObSec than he has attacks to kill you with in 5-6 turns, especially when he needs to shuck you out of your rhinos/razors first.

Make sure your opponent is following the FMC rules for facing as while he can maneuver around easily, he can't do that and still summon things in the right spot or contribute via shooting (depending on what sort of FMC it is).

Worst comes to worst, take a conclave, roll 1 on sanctic for the primaris if you're facing daemons and then roll the remainder on Librarius aiming for Psychic scourge. One of the things that you've missed is that the psycher only manifests on 6's if he's been hit by this (on a draw or better for the check) which will stop any summoning from that psycher cold and since it's a malediction, you don't even have to roll to hit. Even if you don't roll psy scourge, the other powers aren't terrible and null zone stacks with banishment meaning that the prince is in a large amount of trouble.

Alternately, enfeeble it and then hit it with a str8 weapon for good old instant death.

If things get really desperate, take the Masque in an allied detatchment and make him move 3" a turn and then just shoot the crap out of him at normal ballistics skill.

You should be able to win against most FMC's by simply playing the mission as battle company, if not, the next time you play, grab some pictures and write up a battle report so we can point out what's going wrong and how to fix it.

Daemon FMCs are probably more problematic than Nids FMC, against Flyrants, you may just activate Devastor Dorctrines and shoot your Grav Centurions in the air, you should be able to drop one with even min unit. Daemons ones on the other hand, have more trickery, expecially the Tzeentch one with rerollable 2++, and to alesser extends the Nurgle DP who can get 2+ cover when jinking, are almost unkillable to SM.
Generally speaking, the best way to fight a Flying Circus is to Ignore / avoid them and go after their weak units on ground. Despite some of them can be claimed "ultily broken", they each are at most killing 2 units a turn with Extreme Luck On Their Side. If you are that unlucky draw on kill point games when against them or draw lots of "kill something" Tactical objective when fight against them, no luck.... But Otherwise, just keep to the objectives on table and in cards.

 Corvus_corax wrote:
To be brutally honest, because your army list probably sucks against your opponents'. Space Marines have plenty of options to take out FMC's and Daemons alike.

A Gladius Strike Force should have no problem vs either of these threats if you kit it out correctly. Either go full barebones tacticals with as many TL HB Razorbacks as you can field while adding some shenanigans on the side - take your pick. A minimum Gladius will cost you 985 points with the 10th Company Task force as Aux, meaning you still have over 850 points to spend on smart choices for the rest of your army. Alternatively make it an Ironhands Gladius for 5+ IWND and kit the Razorbacks out with Las/Plas. Give your Tacticals special weapons, take a command squad and make a mini-Smashfucker star to wipe the floor with any ground chaff. 100+ bolter shots, 8+ lascannons and 16 Rapid Firing Plasmaguns should do the trick.

If that's not to your taste, the a simple CAD + a formation should do the trick as long as you bring the right tools for the job. Centurions (even the assault kind w/ Flamers), Thunderfire Cannons, Predators w/ Heavy Bolter Sponsons and Tacticals/Scouts all dish out a lot of shots. A couple of these units or a combination would take you a long way. Also Ironclad Dreadnoughts with Heavy Flamers, preferably in Drop Pods. If you're using Devastator squads you need at least 2-3 extra wounds and some good Chapter Tactics to go along with them. Also, don't be the guy who puts Plasma Cannons in his Tactical Squads or mixes Heavy Weapons in a Devastator team if you want to win a couple of games. On the other hand if you just want to play fluffy and that's your thing, well then you shouldn't be complaining in the first place...

Anyway, I know some of what I said might sound harsh. But I hope it helps.

I wasn't complaining, I was asking a question. I don't know about harsh, but I did think your post was kinda rude, however you took the time to offer me some advice and try to answer my question, so we will put that aside. Let's dissect this a little bit.

I'm not sure why you and others here are recommending Template and Blast, as they can't even be fired at Swooping Flyers...

I'm not sure why you would assume I'm playing at 1850. The game in question was at 1250. It was my first time playing Battle Company at that point level, and I don't think I would again, but that's another matter. Suppose I do have enough extra points to load out properly: Although Las-Plas is not something I'd be likely to field, as it'd be a total pain to make WYSIWYG, that's not a bad option. Let's look at the math though.

First of all,100 Bolter shots is going to take you into your third shooting or longer phase to kill a FDP with Power Armour (if you don't knock it down, which at 33.3% odd rolling once per phase is not something one should count on) roughly 50% of the time. This assumes you can get all 50 of your little Marines into 12" range, which even if you could, wouldn't be wise if the enemy has any blast or template. This also assumes you're going to be able to keep said 50 marines alive out in the open while they chase said Daemon Prince around like a bunch of keystone cops. Real world conditions, you're probably going to get a wound a turn at best. 8 Lascannon shots will typically give you 1.33 hits per shooting phase. That's not bad until it jinks. Then you're looking at less than one hit/wound (even at base toughness, not enough to Instant Death) per turn. This all assumes you've got LOS with all 8 and they're all still on the table. Not a lot of places to hide 8 Razorbacks from Obliterators, or whatever else the opponent has chosen with his other 1600 points. The Plasma will avg 3 hits per phase or less, depending how many of them you can get within 12", assuming once again that they all have LOS and all are still alive. With Jink factored in, you're probably not going to hit at all with the Lascannons, and will get one, maybe two wounds if you're lucky with the Plasma.

So what are you likely to have achieved? You shot your whole 1850 army at one model for a turn, likely didn't kill it, likely didn't knock it down, and it's still free to continue to conjure away to your heart's content. The same is not unlikely to happen the following turn, maybe more as as your rapidly diminishing force gets rapidly diminishing returns. Meanwhile, what has your opponents army been doing that turn or two? Likely taking control of objectives and key terrain, as well as removing a lot of your models, and racking up a sizeable Victory Point lead. Will you kill the FDP eventually? Most likely yes, but this is all an incredibly inefficient use of points resources, a waste of at the very least one, possibly three or more turns that you don't have to waste, and good way to kill a Flying Daemon Prince, but loose the game.

I wasn't looking for A way to kill an FDP, that much is obvious. Snap shot it to death. There's a huge cost to that though. In the game in question, I chose to ignore it for that reason, and did so at enormous cost as well as the vector strikes, and 40 conjured Daemonettes along with the rest of his army ground me down. I was asking for a BETTER way to do it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Skullhammer wrote:
Have a look into nova psy powers

That's potentially huge. As Nova is a subtype of witchfire, I didn't think it would be allowed to be used against Flyers/ FMC, but the Nova rules do indeed indicate an exception. With Conclave you could make that hurt, and if you get Lucky and knock it down in Psychic, the Shooting phase is going to be filled with glee...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
Culexus assassin

That's interesting, the Cluexus couldn't charge, it's Psych-out Grenades couldn't be used, and the Animus Speculum would have to fire snap shots, but if you could keep him within 12" without getting killed, his Psychic Abination rule would negate the Daemon's Conjuring. Is that what you meant, or am I missing something else?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Drasius wrote:

Don't leave your heavy/special weapons completely at the back where they can get vector struck.

Make sure your opponent is following the FMC rules for facing as while he can maneuver around easily, he can't do that and still summon things in the right spot or contribute via shooting (depending on what sort of FMC it is).

My digging in the books has revealed that yes, I think he was taking liberties with the turs that he shouldn't, and Vector Strike wounds are supposed to be randomly allocated, so that shouldn't have been nearly as effective as it was.

 Drasius wrote:

As for being demoralising, you should be able to simply camp in your metal boxes and wait out the turn counter since you'll have more ObSec than he has attacks to kill you with in 5-6 turns, especially when he needs to shuck you out of your rhinos/razors first.

You're right, but my martial pride will not permit me to do this haha...

 Drasius wrote:

Alternately, enfeeble it and then hit it with a str8 weapon for good old instant death.

Oooo... although to hit it with a S8 you'd have to shoot at it w avg 6 Str8's, 12 w Jink.



Thanks for the input guys!

I never said you were complaining, not neccessarily. Just that you were on the conditions that you 1. wanted to win and 2. wanted to play fluffy at the same time. Most people don't realize that you can't have your cake and eat it in this game. And well, honestly, that annoys me. I was being pretty rude though, sorry. But hard truths are best for those who can handle them.

So on to the subject. No, your Space Marine bolters are for killing the daemonettes, not the FMC's. And with Doctrines enacted you either reroll all misses or reroll 1's to hit. If you kit them out with plasmaguns that's a very scary army. Now on your razorbacks you have 8 Lascannons and 16 Plasmaguns - that's 32 TL plasma shots on platforms that can move 12" and snapsot in the air averaging about 9,75 hits from which all you really need are a Jink or 1 wound for the grounding test. No way is he killing you anytime soon either. So yes, Gladius works just fine.

But for a 1250 point game I would simply ignore the daemon prince and go for the objectives. Max out your troop-killing potential and win the ground game. Looks like you're getting some ideas so I'll leave it at that.

 Corvus_corax wrote:
I never said you were complaining, not neccessarily. Just that you were on the conditions that you 1. wanted to win and 2. wanted to play fluffy at the same time. Most people don't realize that you can't have your cake and eat it in this game. And well, honestly, that annoys me. I was being pretty rude though, sorry. But hard truths are best for those who can handle them.

So on to the subject. No, your Space Marine bolters are for killing the daemonettes, not the FMC's. And with Doctrines enacted you either reroll all misses or reroll 1's to hit. If you kit them out with plasmaguns that's a very scary army. Now on your razorbacks you have 8 Lascannons and 16 Plasmaguns - that's 32 TL plasma shots on platforms that can move 12" and snapsot in the air averaging about 9,75 hits from which all you really need are a Jink or 1 wound for the grounding test. No way is he killing you anytime soon either. So yes, Gladius works just fine.

But for a 1250 point game I would simply ignore the daemon prince and go for the objectives. Max out your troop-killing potential and win the ground game. Looks like you're getting some ideas so I'll leave it at that.

The Plasma is great yes, especially with Doctrines to re-roll the Gets Hot.

You can play fluffy and win a decent amount of the time, but it takes a lot more work at learning how to get the absolute best results out of your army. In my case, and in the specific context we are discussing, I think that would involve finding a way not to have to waste all those Bolter and Plasma shots on the Swooping Daemon Prince, or the Daemonettes; ie neutralizing him quickly before he can summon them.

If you don't mind going outside Space Marines I would suggest ally in the Inquisition. Anti-daemon and maybe anti psyker. Add some very cheap plasma cannons, Jokaeros and psykers for fire support.
Razorbacks / Chimeras with S6 Heavy Bolters and Truesilver.

A Xeno Inquisitor with Santic (including a force weapon), rad grenades and Grimore will make assaults against your SM squads far less attractive.

I think you've already worked out the answer. It's the same reason FMCs are so potent - the only hard counters to them are bigger, meaner FMCs, enough firepower to beat the statistics or a few somethings they can't beat without landing.
The problem with most of these solutions is that you can't get them while staying 'fluffy' and the one you do have access to is easily destroyed by a solid chunk of other armies, that's why winning fluffy is so satisfying - you've bucked the odds and you've bucked them good.

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
Culexus assassin

boom

Psychic Abomination rule ... yes..and yes !

flyers of your own can help v. FMCs - storm talons (whatever the littler ones are) are decent at anti air.

But you're not wrong, trying to shoot FMCs out of the air with bolters when you're being swarmed by demons isn't terribly efficient.

On that topic, though, I'd also look at thunderfire artillery. Probably the best anti light infantry artillery in the game, except maybe for wyverns.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
flyers of your own can help v. FMCs - storm talons (whatever the littler ones are) are decent at anti air.

But you're not wrong, trying to shoot FMCs out of the air with bolters when you're being swarmed by demons isn't terribly efficient.

On that topic, though, I'd also look at thunderfire artillery. Probably the best anti light infantry artillery in the game, except maybe for wyverns.

All three types of Space Marine flyers are just decent but far from great in anti FMC, they are good in taking out other mechanical flyers But FMC Flying Circus are much more troublesome, this is due to:

1, Versatile, FMC can do Psychic, shooting, assault all on their own, they can be a "take all comer" unit and basically is "one model DeathStar", while SM flyers can only shoot. Moreover, the SM flyers are usually with weaponary focus on high quality, low quantity shots, even the skyhammer missiles are three shots only, assault cannon are 4 TL shots only, compare to Flyrants 12 TL shots. So the SM army needs other units to accomplish other jobs such as deal with hordes, which caused the following problem:

2, Factions, the factions that can bring in strong FMCs can Easily Spam them, with only a hundred or two points worth of troops to fillin the compulsory, then the FMCs can do everything else. This is something the SM army never can in spam flyers in competitive scene, due to their expensive Troops and their flyers being "not so versatile" which force them to invest much more points in other units. The outcome will be, the SM flyers will always be severely out numbered by any decent flying Circus, despite they themselves are usually cheaper in points compare to their opposing FMC in amodel by model basis.

 Weboflies wrote:
So, I'm a Marine player that likes to field a lot of infantry (Think Battle Company). A few out of my last bunch of games have been pretty demoralizing as I've found myself getting picked aprt by stuff I can't seem to do anything against. After the most recent, and worst, of such games, I got stuck deep in one of those "why am I putting all my energy into something I can't even talk to girls/ well adjusted people about" kinda funks. I pulled myself out of the existential crisis by scouring the internet, and my rulebooks looking for counters, but I didn't really come up with much. The thinks that really give me trouble are:

-Swooping Flying Monstrous Creatures

-Summoning

-Flying Daemon Princes get behind me and take out my spc/hvy wpns with Vector Strike, and then summon 40 Daemonettes to tie up a huge amt of my dakka for pretty much the whole game.

So, I suppose I could take a Librarius Conclave, and go for Psychic Scourge, but The FDP could use it's mobility to keep out of the 24" long enough to Do a fair bit of conjuring. It would act as a deterrent to the Vector Strike if I spread the Conclave out and moved it up alongside my force, but all this hinges on rolling that power, and then I've got to bypass, manifesting the power, Deny the Witch, and not only beat the FDP's roll by 3, but also successfully roll his Summoning as the power to be removed... and really, at the end of the day, all a clever opponent would need to do to counter that counter would be to put all his resources into killing the Librarian with that power, and he can just keep on tarpitting my army with free daemons all day long. I can't help think there's got to be a better way.

Is there much else I can do other than shoot my whole army at it for the whole game, and possibly not kill it? And what if it's a Dakka Flyrant, and I just need to straight up kill the thing?

Need a good solution for these problems that folds nicely into a TAC list for pickup games/ campaigns. Ideas?

Well to be honest, hearing that a Battle Company isn't doing well makes me wonder whats in it. The White Scars are the best rules for a Battle Company so the first thing without changing a single model is to consider that.

My next question is, are you actually fielding a Battle Company? Using the rules for the Battle Company? If so, the most efficacious one i have seen is a Battle Company that spams Grav Amps in Rhinos. It scout moves to the center of the board and just sit there and shoots. Its about as boring asd Space Marines can possibly be and it also racks up a ton of wins. To make it MORE generally useful, my suggestion is definitely to embrace the often ignored anti-air options the Space Mariens do have. The weakness for Magnus is Stomp, so that makes me immediately ask if an Imperial KNight is something you might consider. It has anti-air but it also can stomp Magnus out of existence, one of the few things he will truly fear.

a Psyker star is not the worlds worst idea but the points are limited as always and at some point, FMC's just need a unit that can tie them up and a unit that can knock them down and get them there. Most of what you mentioned revolved around aerial opponents. anything that ignores cover is great. the Hunters Eye can provide some help in that regard.

As a chaos player this stuff scares my DP's:

- Sky fire
- S10, D, Stomps
- LD based psy powers e.g. shriek

Have you considered fortifications? Could kinda fit your boots on the ground theme and bucket you a load of fairly cheap sky firing lascannons.

Can get a vengeance weapons batter A14 3HP building with a quad lascannon S9 AP2 two shots twin links skyfire and inteceptor or 75pts.

You could even take another one with a punisher cannon, mow down the daemons on the turn they are summoned with inteceptor and 20 s5 shots

 Jancoran wrote:


Well to be honest, hearing that a Battle Company isn't doing well makes me wonder whats in it. The White Scars are the best rules for a Battle Company so the first thing without changing a single model is to consider that.

My next question is, are you actually fielding a Battle Company? Using the rules for the Battle Company? If so, the most efficacious one i have seen is a Battle Company that spams Grav Amps in Rhinos. It scout moves to the center of the board and just sit there and shoots.

a Psyker star is not the worlds worst idea but the points are limited as always and at some point, FMC's just need a unit that can tie them up and a unit that can knock them down and get them there. Most of what you mentioned revolved around aerial opponents. anything that ignores cover is great. the Hunters Eye can provide some help in that regard.

Points allowing, I'm definitely cosidering going heavier on Grav Cannons generally, but what gives the Rhino-mounted squads Scout? Is that a White Scars thing?

Shooting down an FMC can be easier said than done at times. Even with a 4 Grav Cannon Dev Squad, (assuming it starts it's turn within "24 of the FMC, and can actually disembark within the half range that's required to move and shoot with Salvo Wpns), that's 12 shots, which will avg 2 hits. both should wound, but it's not all that hard to make 1or 2 Jink saves, and even if you ding it, it only rolls once per phase to be knocked down, and it's more likely than not to stay in the air. Now you've gone and likely exposed your 210 pt unit to being completely savaged by your opponent's force next turn without likely having achieved much at all. Doesn't seem optimal to me... If I'm going to suicide with my spendy Grav Squad, I'd rather put them into a Pod, and possibly erase a heavily armoured unit in his backfield that they're actually optimized to engage, so I can be dictatingtaking the fight to the enemy, rather than chasing my opponent around the table, and reduce the volume of fire my army will face in the coming enemy turn...

Ignores cover does help with the Jink, but I'm still feeling like the 16.5% probability to hit, is just prohibitive in terms of shooting at the thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Latro_ wrote:
As a chaos player this stuff scares my DP's:

- Sky fire
- S10, D, Stomps
- LD based psy powers e.g. shriek

Have you considered fortifications? Could kinda fit your boots on the ground theme and bucket you a load of fairly cheap sky firing lascannons.

Can get a vengeance weapons batter A14 3HP building with a quad lascannon S9 AP2 two shots twin links skyfire and inteceptor or 75pts.

You could even take another one with a punisher cannon, mow down the daemons on the turn they are summoned with inteceptor and 20 s5 shots

I'm not a fan of Skyfire, as it's often useless in a TAC list if you don't run into flyers.

Psychic Shriek is a good one, and it's Primaris too, no?

I was looking this up the other day, I think the only way to get Fortifications without going unbound outside of Stronghold Assault games, is to go with a CAD, and that only allows you one. At most point levels, you don't really have room for a CAD on top of a Battle Company, or even a smaller Gladius, really... or am I mistaken on that?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 zedsdead wrote:

boom

Psychic Abomination rule ... yes..and yes !

Dunno if Cluexus is a fit in a TAC list tho...

Yea shriek is primaris and only WC1, if you can wangle some LD debuffs that'll help too.

good thing is its great vs the summoned daemons too

 Weboflies wrote:

Points allowing, I'm definitely cosidering going heavier on Grav Cannons generally, but what gives the Rhino-mounted squads Scout? Is that a White Scars thing?

Shooting down an FMC can be easier said than done at times. Even with a 4 Grav Cannon Dev Squad, (assuming it starts it's turn within "24 of the FMC, and can actually disembark within the half range that's required to move and shoot with Salvo Wpns), that's 12 shots, which will avg 2 hits. both should wound, but it's not all that hard to make 1or 2 Jink saves, and even if you ding it, it only rolls once per phase to be knocked down, and it's more likely than not to stay in the air. Now you've gone and likely exposed your 210 pt unit to being completely savaged by your opponent's force next turn without likely having achieved much at all. Doesn't seem optimal to me... If I'm going to suicide with my spendy Grav Squad, I'd rather put them into a Pod, and possibly erase a heavily armoured unit in his backfield that they're actually optimized to engage, so I can be dictatingtaking the fight to the enemy, rather than chasing my opponent around the table, and reduce the volume of fire my army will face in the coming enemy turn...

Ignores cover does help with the Jink, but I'm still feeling like the 16.5% probability to hit, is just prohibitive in terms of shooting at the thing.

Yes its a White Scars thing. Whits scars have the best rules for a Battle Company I can think of if you wanna do rhinos. The scout move makes movement a RELATIVELY rare need for the Whits Scars Rhino Battle Company with Grav Spam. Thats the beauty of it. Also, as I mentioned, ignores cover is a thing you should look for to add to your list.

 Jancoran wrote:

 Weboflies wrote:

Points allowing, I'm definitely cosidering going heavier on Grav Cannons generally, but what gives the Rhino-mounted squads Scout? Is that a White Scars thing?

Shooting down an FMC can be easier said than done at times. Even with a 4 Grav Cannon Dev Squad, (assuming it starts it's turn within "24 of the FMC, and can actually disembark within the half range that's required to move and shoot with Salvo Wpns), that's 12 shots, which will avg 2 hits. both should wound, but it's not all that hard to make 1or 2 Jink saves, and even if you ding it, it only rolls once per phase to be knocked down, and it's more likely than not to stay in the air. Now you've gone and likely exposed your 210 pt unit to being completely savaged by your opponent's force next turn without likely having achieved much at all. Doesn't seem optimal to me... If I'm going to suicide with my spendy Grav Squad, I'd rather put them into a Pod, and possibly erase a heavily armoured unit in his backfield that they're actually optimized to engage, so I can be dictatingtaking the fight to the enemy, rather than chasing my opponent around the table, and reduce the volume of fire my army will face in the coming enemy turn...

Ignores cover does help with the Jink, but I'm still feeling like the 16.5% probability to hit, is just prohibitive in terms of shooting at the thing.

Yes its a White Scars thing. Whits scars have the best rules for a Battle Company I can think of if you wanna do rhinos. The scout move makes movement a RELATIVELY rare need for the Whits Scars Rhino Battle Company with Grav Spam. Thats the beauty of it. Also, as I mentioned, ignores cover is a thing you should look for to add to your list.

I'm pretty sure Scout is from Khan, not just White Scars in general

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 Weboflies wrote:

Points allowing, I'm definitely cosidering going heavier on Grav Cannons generally, but what gives the Rhino-mounted squads Scout? Is that a White Scars thing?

Shooting down an FMC can be easier said than done at times. Even with a 4 Grav Cannon Dev Squad, (assuming it starts it's turn within "24 of the FMC, and can actually disembark within the half range that's required to move and shoot with Salvo Wpns), that's 12 shots, which will avg 2 hits. both should wound, but it's not all that hard to make 1or 2 Jink saves, and even if you ding it, it only rolls once per phase to be knocked down, and it's more likely than not to stay in the air. Now you've gone and likely exposed your 210 pt unit to being completely savaged by your opponent's force next turn without likely having achieved much at all. Doesn't seem optimal to me... If I'm going to suicide with my spendy Grav Squad, I'd rather put them into a Pod, and possibly erase a heavily armoured unit in his backfield that they're actually optimized to engage, so I can be dictatingtaking the fight to the enemy, rather than chasing my opponent around the table, and reduce the volume of fire my army will face in the coming enemy turn...

Ignores cover does help with the Jink, but I'm still feeling like the 16.5% probability to hit, is just prohibitive in terms of shooting at the thing.

Yes its a White Scars thing. Whits scars have the best rules for a Battle Company I can think of if you wanna do rhinos. The scout move makes movement a RELATIVELY rare need for the Whits Scars Rhino Battle Company with Grav Spam. Thats the beauty of it. Also, as I mentioned, ignores cover is a thing you should look for to add to your list.

I'm pretty sure Scout is from Khan, not just White Scars in general

irrelevant to the point but sure. Also Hit n Run which is awesome for a shooting force.

With white scars you can get out of transports, fire and get back in making them have to kill vehicles first.

 Dojo wrote:
With white scars you can get out of transports, fire and get back in making them have to kill vehicles first.

uh...well I think there is a Formation that does that, but I wasnt aware it was a White Scars formation? My friend played a Formation that let him do that but I didnt realize it was White Scars. i thought he was playing something else... What's the name of that Formation?

 Jancoran wrote:

 Dojo wrote:
With white scars you can get out of transports, fire and get back in making them have to kill vehicles first.

uh...well I think there is a Formation that does that, but I wasnt aware it was a White Scars formation? My friend played a Formation that let him do that but I didnt realize it was White Scars. i thought he was playing something else... What's the name of that Formation?

The Stormlance battle company in AoD

 gummyofallbears wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 Dojo wrote:
With white scars you can get out of transports, fire and get back in making them have to kill vehicles first.

uh...well I think there is a Formation that does that, but I wasnt aware it was a White Scars formation? My friend played a Formation that let him do that but I didnt realize it was White Scars. i thought he was playing something else... What's the name of that Formation?

The Stormlance battle company in AoD

i did not realize he was playing WhiteScars. i must now look this up! but it underscores what Ive said really: White Scars are awesome.

I like taking flyers to combat flying monstrous creatures, especially if you use Death From the Skies. The Space Marine formation in that book is pretty decent and gets you 4 flyers for 500 points, or you can take one of the cheaper formations that gives you 2 Stormtalons.

A Stormhawk with 2 lascannon shots and 2 Krak missiles is a scary foe for a Hive Tyrant, especially when you have two of them, and especially when they have Ignore Cover due to attack patterns. That will kill a Hive Tyrant in one turn on average. Against demons they're not quite so good due to the demons' invulnerable save but they're still threatening, and demons usually have few to zero guns so they have a lot of trouble shooting down enemy flyers.

before the ITC said "go away, skies of Death" my friend took the 4 flyers plus I wanna say two Imperial Knights and an inquisitor or something like that as an army and did really well with that. His Lancer put the pressure on HARD and his other knight plowed away until the flyers came in to straif the living daylights out of things. Good times. As it turned out.... Tau Empire are a REAL hard counter for that list, but no one else had much fun against it. Im sure FMC's wouldnt have liked to get shot up by those planes. though in Skies of Death it nerfs you against aerial stuff if youre "ground attack". Not as cool.

 Saber wrote:
I like taking flyers to combat flying monstrous creatures, especially if you use Death From the Skies. The Space Marine formation in that book is pretty decent and gets you 4 flyers for 500 points, or you can take one of the cheaper formations that gives you 2 Stormtalons.

A Stormhawk with 2 lascannon shots and 2 Krak missiles is a scary foe for a Hive Tyrant, especially when you have two of them, and especially when they have Ignore Cover due to attack patterns. That will kill a Hive Tyrant in one turn on average. Against demons they're not quite so good due to the demons' invulnerable save but they're still threatening, and demons usually have few to zero guns so they have a lot of trouble shooting down enemy flyers.

With rolling the right reward, any DP can get an 18inch S8 AP1 lance gun. Furthermore, Tzeentch Daemon Prince will usually have a rerollable 2++ save and might get Str D6+4 or StrD shot Psychic power, hit on 2s rerolling 1s. Slaanesh DP will Vector Strike your flyer with S7 before dishing out 2D6 S7 shots (S10 if he got iron arm) out of his back into your rear armor, hit on 2s rerolling 1s. Nurgle Daemon Prince will have 2+ jink save, Khrone Daemon Prince will have an armor which reduce the Str of your incoming firepower by one so your TML wound it on 3s instead of 2s (all DP in Inferno Tetra are T6), the latter two might be weaker in taking out your flyer, but they can just go after your ground Marines, with Psychic sherik, or poison AP3 template, AP2 large Blast. Followed by assault to finish off the Marines without any difficulty.

 Jancoran wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 Dojo wrote:
With white scars you can get out of transports, fire and get back in making them have to kill vehicles first.

uh...well I think there is a Formation that does that, but I wasnt aware it was a White Scars formation? My friend played a Formation that let him do that but I didnt realize it was White Scars. i thought he was playing something else... What's the name of that Formation?

The Stormlance battle company in AoD

i did not realize he was playing WhiteScars. i must now look this up! but it underscores what Ive said really: White Scars are awesome.

It isn't White Scars only, however it is one of the 2 Core Formations that make up their Meta Detachment.
Because of that and upon initial release it being in the RG/WS campaign book people tend to associate it primarily with White Scars, however since AoD it's become Core for other Chapters too (like Salamanders and Iron Hands).

Some other options:
* Summoning is Warp Charge intensive. Take some Thunderfire Cannons (or Wyverns if you play/ally Guard) and blast his Pink Horror batteries off the board. Ignores Cover means Horrors can't Go to Ground to get their sweet cover saves. Make sure he actually has the Wrath of Magnus book and Blue Horror models on hand if he tries to do Blue Horror splitting shenanigans too. Otherwise tell him bad luck.

* Use Drop Pods/Callidus Assassins/anything else that can get in range/los to dump wounds on Horrors as well. Especially if it Ignores Cover. Kill the Warp Charge batteries and all those Warp Charge 3 powers become quite difficult to pull off.

* Sisters of Battle or Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors with Condemmor Boltguns can force Perils of the Warp on a successful *hit*. Grey Knights, Inquisitors and Sisters of Silence can also do the same with their Psyk Out Grenades. 2/3 chance to force a Wound with no saves and some other nasty effects is not bad.

* Culexus Assassins and Sisters of Silence both give huge penalties to Psykers within 12" of them (Psykers will only harness Warp Charge on a 6, and have any Blessings/Maledictions completely cancelled). Taking a Null Maiden Task force will start straight up removing dice from their Warp Charge pool too.

* Demon infantry units generally die horribly to shooting (unless they are psychically/Grimoire of True Names buffed) so just shoot them to death with Boltguns. Most of them are only T3 with a 5+ save. Also, flamers are nasty...

* Devastator squads with Grav Cannons, popping Devastator Doctrines for re-rolls, can give Flyers/FMC's pause and force them to consider jinking just in case you roll a few 6s. Also consider seeing if your opponent wants to play with Mysterious Objectives - a Skyfire Nexus on your heavy weapons squad is bad news for flyers.