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I was just browsing through the index. Where is the world Eaters anti tanks?

Melee is so often capped at S8 (power fist, thunder hammers.) But do the world Eaters have good anti tank? The lascannon predators and exalted chain fiats seem promising. Angron of course. But the regular dudes, and even the demon Prince does not have a S that lets them wound on 4+ or even 3+.

They are not doing to hot in tournaments either. Is there something I am missing? How do they work?

You're right, they're not doing so hot in tournaments. Hopefully that means you'll see points decreases in time.

Things that can increase anti-tank potential:

*'Warp blades' blessing
*'For the skull throne' stratagem. (I think this might have been the thing you missed.)

Units: Terminators with chainfists, Exalted eightbound, Eightbound aura, Land raider,
Predator, Forgefiend with triple ectoplasma cannons, Lord of skulls

I think that the codex designers had something like this in mind:
Rage-fueled invigoration gives everyone +2".
Unbridled bloodlust lets you advance and charge.
Eightbound scout 6", move 9+2+d6".
Exalted eightbound are scouted 6" by lord invocatus, then move 9+2+d6".
Lord invocatus gives one of those squads an extra couple of inches by running ahead of his unit.

So now your army is largely 7-d6" from your opponent's deployment zone, in range to make successful charges. Add Angron's +1" charge aura and most of your units are making it in.

An opponent doesn't dare deploy on the line for fear of a turn 1 massed charge. This means they're abandoning primary points to survive. Great! Blood offering strat & jakhals let you cheaply take and hold objectives in the open. Play cagey, hide most of your army behind ruins in the midfield, and wait for him to come to you, because in the meantime you're scoring and he's not.

Going second? No problem. Place your units where the scout moves can get them out of sight. Let your opponent decide whether to waste his first turn or whether to use it to come closer to you, shortening your charge ranges further.

Seems a solid enough game plan, so... why isn't it working?
Possible reasons:
-Not enough terrain.
-High points costs.
-Opponents can surround you with cheap damage from range and whittle you down too far too fast. If you go to meet them, you've left your positions and your opponents can scoop up points. Meanwhile, your opponent can stand in the open, knowing that you lack shooting and that if you go take them out with one of your squads, they'll be able to shoot that squad dead if it's left in the open.

I think that adopting a custodes style of play might suit World Eaters. Both are melee focused armies that want to claim the midfield and camp there. The forgefiend is the equivalent of the calladius grav-tank in this analogy. But World Eaters sacrifice resilience for speed.
I reckon that the advantage custodes have over world eaters is 1) their ability to a access fights first, 2) their resilience and damage point for point after accounting for boosts like their -1 damage strat, your wrathful devotion, etc, and 3) The sort of people who play custodes have more patience than the sort of people who play world eaters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If I were to build a world eaters list, it might look like this:
First-turn-charge-threat:
Angron
Lord invocatus
Eightbound (3 man)
Eightbound (3 man)
Exalted Eightbound (3 man)
Exalted Eightbound (3 man)

Fire support:
Forgefiend x2

Screening/objective control/blessings help:
Jakhals x2 (10 man)
Berzerkers (5 man)
Chaos spawn x3

1990

Suppose that like a Custodes player, you cleverly hide out of LOS whenever possible, so your relative lack of resilience (3+/5++) is less of a problem. Suppose you get an opponent to start off a few inches further back in turn 1. Well, now you're on the objectives. Can you hold them? Custodes can put some 30 T6 2+/4++ W3 bodies on those objectives, with some ability to fight first and shoot. I don't think the world eaters can keep up with that. Maybe after a significant points decrease to the eightbound.

 Niiai wrote:
I was just browsing through the index. Where is the world Eaters anti tanks?

Melee is so often capped at S8 (power fist, thunder hammers.) But do the world Eaters have good anti tank? The lascannon predators and exalted chain fiats seem promising. Angron of course. But the regular dudes, and even the demon Prince does not have a S that lets them wound on 4+ or even 3+.

They are not doing to hot in tournaments either. Is there something I am missing? How do they work?

The only AT gun options in the index are generic units also available to chaos marines, who have better rules support for buffing guns - I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the tournament issues are a mix of there not being many WE players with the new units since the faction recently got split out, and many people favouring generic chaos marines for the better shooting options.

Best gun option is probably going to be an allied knight, but if you want to stay in the index it might be worth looking at the helbrute - it's not great but it can do reactive shooting/fighting every time it's targeted so a twin lascannon/fist brute could just walk towards vehicles tapping away at them. All of the other guns are significantly better off being played as generic red chaos marines.

Well to quite a mtg strategy is "do not violate the prime directive" aka don't play a worse version of a deck. (Mtg is a card game with lots of options.)

I would classify world Eaters, current Custodies and Orks as "bulk type army" they want to play agressive and force confrontations. All of them are melee focused. And Custodies just happen to be top dog in that department.

I see what you are saying. Thank you. I did not consider the hell brute.

Dreadnoughts with twin lascannon and misslelaunchers. if your opponent shoot those the can shootback as often as the get shot at.