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Hello, I'm sorta new to the table top wargame. I've played about five games at my FLGS, and I've lost four of them. One was a tie based on points, but I was down to my last man on the field.

I've had fun playing, but the losses are slowly dampening my spirits. I was hoping for some tips and tactics to help me up my game. Simply sticking to cover doesn't seem to be cutting it.

I run a mech army; 1000pt vets x 3 with meltas in chimeras, and two Leman Russ exterminators with multimelta sponsons. Mainly as a TAC list. I thought our local store didn't have any players using fliers, but the necron cresent thing with the death ray proved me wrong.

So please post any tips/tricks you guys may know, and if you need any more info from me please ask.

EDIT

This is the list I am currently running. Also to clarify a bit about my battles, all have been team. My first one (a 3v3) I had to leave early and they lost. The next was a 2v2 (IG vs IG) and our side lost by one point. The next was a 2v2 (IG vs the new Tau) And the last one was also a 2vs1, me and another newish guy verse a veteran (who helped out with the rules we forgot) in a 2k battle against his necron (IG+DA vs Nec).
Mainly the list I ran previously was this one; minus the tanks, one vet team, and with melta and flamers. Hope this helps clearing some things up.

HQ: Company Command Squad
3 Company Command Squad, = (Meltagun x3)
1 Company Commander,
1 Chimera, = (Multi + Heavy Flamer)

Troops: Veteran Squad
8 Veteran Squad, = (Meltagun x2 + Plasma gun x1)
1 Veteran Sergeant,
1 Chimera, (Multi + Heavy Flamer)

Troops: Veteran Squad
8 Veteran Squad, = (Meltagun x3)
1 Veteran Sergeant,
1 Chimera, (Multi + Heavy Flamer)

Troops: Veteran Squad
8 Veteran Squad, = (Meltagun x3)
1 Veteran Sergeant,
1 Chimera, (Multi + Heavy Flamer)

Heavy Support: Leman Russ Squadron
1 Leman Russ Squadron,
1 Leman Russ Exterminator, = (Lascannon + Multi-melta Sponsons x2)

Heavy Support: Leman Russ Squadron
1 Leman Russ Squadron,
1 Leman Russ Exterminator, = (Lascannon + Multi-melta Sponsons x2)

Haven't had a 1v1 yet, perhaps it's just dice roll luck and my more experienced opposition instead of just my tactics?

Well, it's kind of hard to know what's going on without more information. The only thing that's easy and obvious to fix is list building problems, but you seem to have a decent enough idea given what you said you're bringing.

That means that your problems are on the table. We really can't help much with that without seeing one of your games. Perhaps you could do a picture-filled battle report?

That or your dice are rolling a lot worse than average.

Post your list and we will have a look.

The first step is to get Vendettas. That will solve your flyer problem and give you some better anti-tank and allow you to replace the Exterminators with something more effective against infantry.

Ignore peregrine at this stage. If you're losing, but you don't know why, just buying new models is unlikely to help that much. Your problem might be one of target priority, threat assessment and letting your troops stray too far or too close to the enemy.

Are you finding your tanks dying too quick, or is there a problem with your troops being wiped out in close combat or something? If your Russes aren't being that effective, maybe ask your opponents if you could proxy them as a different type of russ to see if a different weapon system gives you a better insight into using the tanks.

 Flinty wrote:
Ignore peregrine at this stage. If you're losing, but you don't know why, just buying new models is unlikely to help that much.

Nonsense. When the OP's problem is "I couldn't handle Necron flyers" the obvious solution is to buy Vendettas. The fact that an IG list with Vendettas is almost certainly better than one without them is just a nice bonus.

You don't need Vendettas to win with Imperial Guard but they do make it a lot easier.

I'm finding with the shift going more towards massed Infantry and Flyers the Heavy Bolter Sponsons are quite handy at allowing the Vendetta to multi-task. When building an TAC list I'd consider throwing them on for the extra 10 pts.

Well Exterminators are kind of crappy. I'd swap them out for some Executioners, you should be able to afford a couple of bare-bones at that points level. But other than that, a decent list. Don't feel bad for losing to Necron cheese

I'm not entirely sure how Executioners (especially when bare bones) are going to help deal with fliers.
If OP is struggling with fliers, then something to handle them is needed.

What else caused you trouble? You mentioned that not many use fliers but everyone seems to be concentrating on them.

From the OP's post it appears that only one of the problems is necron fliers. It infers that the rest of his opponents don't really use fliers, so I don't think there is a need to immediately go and buy one of the most expensive GW models there is. If everyone there is friendly enough, why not ask to face a necron force without fliers to help getting into the ground game a bit more. If you're not used to the rules, starting with all the most advanced bits is not the best way to go.

I can relate to your issues as ive only been playing the game for 9 mos or so and have just recently started playing IG.

Im 1w/1d/2 losses so far.Now my losses have been to a very good tau player with a well tuned list so no surprises there.

I too use an Exterminator mostly( only fighting in the 500-750 range now)I like to go with the LC in the bow and the multimeltas on the sponsons,expensive,yes but ive been able to make use of its multiuse shooting build with 7 shots total and pretty good anti armor in that grouping.Ive also used an Eradicator with HB sponsons to very good effect.

As has been mentioned the vendetta would be a nice addition.But the main reason for that would be to add the abiltiy to get some troops or even any presence into the opponents backfield.Ive been using marbo and just having him back there can take alot of pressure off the front line(except tau they just blow up everthing as soon as it enters the game,lol).Perhaps even some storm troopers would be a viable addition ..easy to proxy and rather cheap for a deep striker.Im thinking of trying them out too

Basically having just a line/wall of shooting is nice as long as the board layout is favorable to that,but really I can see that guard need to have some action going on in the opponents backfield or at least flanks to keep them from focusing down your fireline.

Coming from playing Orks Im having lots of fun playing them even though I too dont win much,heh.

< taken by the void dragon >

 Che-Vito wrote:

Pros:
- ignores Jink saves
- can claim cover saves ranging from 5+ in cover, to 2+ with Camo Nets behind a Bastion
- weight of fire, 8 twin-linked BS3 shots at S7 Ap4 with Skyfire
- makes you feel better for not taking a cookie-cutter solution that's poorly balanced

Cons:
- cannot transport like the Vendetta
- must Snapfire at ground targets (IIRC)
- Penetrating hits require a roll of a '6' to nuke a vehicle, whereas a Lascannon requires a 5+

I would love to see someone show up to a tourney, and play a 'hard counter' list, to some of the E-List designs. 9 Hydras for 675 points? Yes please.

You left out two very important cons:
- The Hydra takes up a Heavy Support selection.
- The enemy flyers can easily alpha strike the Hydra.

< taken by the void dragon >

TL,DR: Hydras are terrible. They suck against ground targets, and are mediocre at best against air targets. The only reason to take them instead of Vendettas is if you're trying to claim some ridiculous moral high ground of "I'm not the kind of person who takes Vendettas".

 Che-Vito wrote:
[5+ save, AV12]

And this is your mistake. Hydras have AV 12 on the front, but only AV 10 on the sides and flyers have the mobility to get into your side arc more often than not.

will take ~0.44 Glancing hits, and ~0.44 Penetrating hits (with no ability to outright destroy the vehicle.)

Your math is completely wrong. A tesla destructor averages 5.333 hits, which gives you 0.888 glance and 0.888 pen against AV 12. If you're taking the hits on AV 10 that's 0.888 glance and 1.77 pens. So a pretty good chance of destroying the Hydra outright if the Scythe gets into side armor, and no matter which AV it's shooting at it's likely to at least shake the Hydra and cripple its shooting.

If you've deployed those Hydras more than 42" away from the opponent's deployment zone, then those Night Scythes can enjoy firing with Twin-Linked BS1.

Err, what? You do realize that Night Scythes can move 36" and fire at full BS, right?

A Doom Scythe won't likely be hitting well-deployed Hydras with it's Death Ray on the turn that it arrives.

Completely wrong. The table is 48" across, and you can move up to 36" with a 12+3D6" range turret weapon. The chances of a Hydra being out of range on the turn a Doom Scythe arrives are nonexistent.

 Peregrine wrote:
TL,DR: Hydras are terrible. They suck against ground targets, and are mediocre at best against air targets. The only reason to take them instead of Vendettas is if you're trying to claim some ridiculous moral high ground of "I'm not the kind of person who takes Vendettas".

 Che-Vito wrote:
[5+ save, AV12]

And this is your mistake. Hydras have AV 12 on the front, but only AV 10 on the sides and flyers have the mobility to get into your side arc more often than not.

will take ~0.44 Glancing hits, and ~0.44 Penetrating hits (with no ability to outright destroy the vehicle.)

Your math is completely wrong. A tesla destructor averages 5.333 hits, which gives you 0.888 glance and 0.888 pen against AV 12. If you're taking the hits on AV 10 that's 0.888 glance and 1.77 pens. So a pretty good chance of destroying the Hydra outright if the Scythe gets into side armor, and no matter which AV it's shooting at it's likely to at least shake the Hydra and cripple its shooting.

If you've deployed those Hydras more than 42" away from the opponent's deployment zone, then those Night Scythes can enjoy firing with Twin-Linked BS1.

Err, what? You do realize that Night Scythes can move 36" and fire at full BS, right?

A Doom Scythe won't likely be hitting well-deployed Hydras with it's Death Ray on the turn that it arrives.

Completely wrong. The table is 48" across, and you can move up to 36" with a 12+3D6" range turret weapon. The chances of a Hydra being out of range on the turn a Doom Scythe arrives are nonexistent.

That necron will average 1.6 hull points against the Hydra, wheras (assuming death sycthe is AV 11 to the best of my recollection) the hydra will average 3 hits, 1.5 hull points against it. So as long as they cost the same, the hydra barely loses out. Do they cost the same? I don't have the necron codex.

 BryllCream wrote:
That necron will average 1.6 hull points against the Hydra, wheras (assuming death sycthe is AV 11 to the best of my recollection) the hydra will average 3 hits, 1.5 hull points against it. So as long as they cost the same, the hydra barely loses out. Do they cost the same? I don't have the necron codex.

But the Necron flyer gets to shoot first and has a good chance (don't forget that it will often be shooting at AV 10 side armor, not AV 12 front) of killing or suppressing the Hydra before it can do anything. And of course if it's a Doom Scythe then auto-hit STR 10 AP 1 on every vehicle in the squadron is pretty good at making Hydras go away.

Of course the real question here isn't if the Hydra can ever do anything, it's if the Hydra can do better than the Vendetta. And since the Vendetta often gets to shoot second with much better guns, is far more durable (AV 12 side and immune to death rays), and is not utterly useless when not shooting at flyers I think the choice here is pretty obvious.

If the Doom Sythe wants to spend all game shooting at my hydras, it's welcome to. And if it manages to get side armour, when you as the guard player know exactly where it's coming from (its own table edge) then you deserve to lose.

But still, point proven. Hydras are an effective way of dealing with flying bakery.

No need to spam every single thread with "just spam vendettas", it gets tiring and I'm trying not to address it.

I've shot my fair share of necron fliers down with melta weapons before. If you're bringing two russes with sponson multimeltas and a lascannon, it's not too difficult to get a hit in with one of them. Plus, if you're snap-firing at fliers anyways, it's not much of a sacrifice to move a chimera full of veterans 12" to fire melta out the top hatch.

Fliers don't need anything special to handle assuming you're bringing enough anti-tank, especially since not that many armies will have both tank spam AND flier spam at the same time.

You might consider a hydra or two, but I'd only really bother if you also face off against a bunch of skimmers or something else worth shooting hydras at.

Once again, this is one of those things where your list seems more or less fine, so it's probably a matter of how you're using it, or how your dice are rolling.

 BryllCream wrote:
And if it manages to get side armour, when you as the guard player know exactly where it's coming from (its own table edge) then you deserve to lose.

It's not a matter of player skill, it's just simple geometry. Just try it yourself: put a Hydra on the table and draw the lines between armor arcs, and then compare that to the movement options for a flyer. You can align the Hydra so that getting into side armor puts the flyer somewhere that it doesn't want to be, but it's very difficult to remove side armor entirely.

Also, you don't know where it's coming from. The flyer can arrive anywhere on a 6' table edge, and then move up to 36" at any angle. That's a huge range of positions where it could be for its first shooting phase, and protecting a unit against some of those positions means making it vulnerable to others.

No need to spam every single thread with "just spam vendettas", it gets tiring and I'm trying not to address it.

Then don't post. A newbie having trouble needs advice on good AA units, and doesn't need to be used as a pawn in the "no Vendetta spam" game.

 Ailaros wrote:
Fliers don't need anything special to handle assuming you're bringing enough anti-tank, especially since not that many armies will have both tank spam AND flier spam at the same time.

Exactly. Once you're bringing Vendettas to handle anti-tank (like you should be) you don't really need to invest too heavily in dedicated AA units.

And of course if you're willing to bring a platoon you can take LC Sabre guns for additional anti-tank (with the nice benefit of being able to deal with targets that are outside melta range) that will also help with your AA problems.

I built this list to hard counter a necron flyer spam list.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/526237.page

The only real difference between this and my normal list is that the normal list has a Rune Priest, 2x Grey Hunter Squads with meltas and Drop Pods and a Long Fang Unit with ML and Drop Pod with less Sabres and only one blob.

If your to combat flyers a lot Sabres are your bread and butter. They out class Hydras in every way. Being able to damage or destroy a flyer before it gets to attack you is half the battle won. They can also insta kill those pesky wraiths.

Get tau allies.

 Ravenous D wrote:
Tank shock, Burn and repeat.

You can't tank shock flyers but would be cool if you could.

I re-read the OP, and noticed the flyer thing, against most people the tank shock burn tactic works great. Against Cron-Air you just have to load up on anti air stuff.

OP what list types have you played against. You might also want to just outright post your list to cool down the blood bath that can occur.

@Peregrine
Considering his meta with as far as I read only 1 flyer list he may not need a vendetta. I will not argue with you vendettas are the best unit in the codex and possibly in the game. LC sabres are the only other realistic option to be on even footing with a necron flyingbakery.

@Ailros
Is correct that you can manage without a vendetta quite easily in most metas and you will do just fine. Like you have said before vendettas are 40K on easy mode, so when you learn a game and are loosing all the time easy mode may be the answer.

@Che-Vito & BryllCream
Be reasonable here, look at what Peregrine is saying and realize it is true. A real necron flying bakery will destroy or cripple your hydras turn 2 when they come on and may have to devote half of their shooting on turn 3 to finishing the ones that got to snap shoot turn 2. You spent 75 pts for 4 snap shot autocannon shots per hydra. If you are going to use hydras in this manner you need to reserve them and hope they come on after the enemy flyers. This way you should be able to get them to jink and have to snap fire in return. Keep in mind Knight Scythes are 100 pts and will drop off their warriors before you can kill them if you use Hydras. They also will kill your hydras at at least 1.5 hydras to 1 Scythe. This is a terrible trade for you but at least you can attempt it and weed out the bad necron players who through bad positioning and target priority allow you to kill them whereas if you fielded something like all autocannon platoons you would not have a chance.

Fair enough.

I suppose part of the problem here is that we're talking about 1000 points, which means he'd likely have to ditch the russes for vendettas (which I don't know if he wants to do or not), and that fliers aren't the only problem.

I still don't think it's necessarily a list problem, though.

 Ailaros wrote:
which means he'd likely have to ditch the russes for vendettas

Or ditch the Chimeras. At 1000 points:

HQ:
CCS, 4x melta (in Vendetta)

Troops:
Veterans, 3x melta (in Vendetta)
Veterans, 3x melta, Chimera

Fast:
Vendetta
Vulture (punisher cannons)
Vendetta

Heavy:
LR Demolisher
Griffon

Alternatively if you want more AV 14 you can trade the Vulture and Griffon for a second Demolisher and Marbo.

Sure. I guess the question is if he wants to play a mech+russ list or an air-cav list.

 Ailaros wrote:
Sure. I guess the question is if he wants to play a mech+russ list or an air-cav list.

Pure Chimera spam is dead, especially against Necrons. The question is whether he wants to play an air-cav list with LR + Chimera support, or an air-cav list with Sabre platoon support. Or continue losing, I guess.

Vendetta's are a good to great unit but have drawbacks.

you have a maximum of 4 turns in a 5 turn game.
allying with anyone that can affect reserve rolls (guard CCS) makes your Vendetta's much weaker. if against warlord trait that affects reserves, might not get them in at all.
even if you take 3 vendetta's (approx 20% of a 2k list) thats only 3 vehicles that "usually" arrive sporadically.
even with BS3 twin linked you are only hitting 4-5 times out of 6 shots (with my luck it was 3 shots ), you can count on some getting through but even against AV12 they arent automatic killers, vs. hordes they are abyssmal
tactically "always going second" seems a bit trite when dealing with other flier armies.
New Tau can eat a flier army for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
positioning/angling for maximum effective attacks can be a bit cumbersome as the models take up a lot of room.
i have found 1st-2nd turn shooting makes a world of differnece in guard (game is usually won there) with Vens possibly out for those critical turns things can turn nasty quick.

(2) Hydra's (1 with camo) behind a quad gun give them as much survivability as 2 Vens for almost the same cost, and they are on the field turn 1.
Hydra can zap those pesky FMC much better than a Vendetta (volume of fire vs. inv save) point for point, and if you get necron focusing on hydra's for a turn thats usually only 2 turns remaining of getting shot at by other stuff.
Hydra's destroy Skimmers.

personal opinion, i switched from vendetta's (3) to flamer tanks and Hydra's (Tau are wrecking me), i believe the loss of Scout severley hurt the way i played my plasma/melta airborne ranger units, a flanking vehicle that drops its payload litterally anywhere on the field and killy troops to zap whatever you need was what made the Vendetta primo.

Hydra's are not "better" they just do the job differently.

If you need to get troops deployed for maximum effectiveness, Drop Pod GH work much better than Vendetta grunts.