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Heldrakes are awesome and lots of dakka wins in 6th ed. So how effective would a list based on:

2 Ork battlewagons with 20 boyz with shootas and 4 big shootas each

small, 4 man ork nob biker mob with warboss

Chaos land raider w/ chaos lord of khorne w/ axe of blind fury

7 chaos marines of khorne w/ccws, 1 melta

be?

lots of armor 14, lots of dakka, just not much anti air. can this still be effective? or is the meta so focussed on air that it can't compete?

You achilles heel will be FMC and Vendettas (common problem).

Depending on your meta, this might not be such a problem. However, you're going to be somewhat rock-paper-scissors prone.

This is not necessarily going to ruin you, but you have to accept this level of vulnerability to a narrow band of possible builds. In some areas, those builds are common enough than I would not put money on avoiding them.

If you're talking about just some games with some friends or at the FLGS, you'll have some fun. OTOH if you want to win an event, I would say its a poor bet to think you can avoid them on the top tables.

@Dracos: I agree Vendettas would be a huge thorn in my side, but are FMCs that scary vs this list? Heldrakes can't be assaulted and should be able to deal at least one wound to most FMCs per turn (depending on positioning of course), but will volume of shots not be enough to put wounds on most?

If I found the 100 pts for an ADL/Cannon, would that in any way change your opinion on the list? I can't decide if it's worth it, and you sound like you have more experience than I do....

FMC's are pretty damn good.
Being mainly a nid player, ive found flyrants to be the most reliable anti-tank against AV14.

High speed and smash attacks, mixed with hitting rear armour really does make killing AV14 rather easy.


Vens - They really are just a problem in general.
IMO they are the kings of the sky in 40k and nothing really does come close to them.
Just need to pour shots into them until something sticks.

floraljetbike wrote:
Heldrakes are awesome and lots of dakka wins in 6th ed. So how effective would a list based on:

2 Ork battlewagons with 20 boyz with shootas and 4 big shootas each

small, 4 man ork nob biker mob with warboss

Chaos land raider w/ chaos lord of khorne w/ axe of blind fury

7 chaos marines of khorne w/ccws, 1 melta

be?

lots of armor 14, lots of dakka, just not much anti air. can this still be effective? or is the meta so focussed on air that it can't compete?

DE wouldn't have a problem with this.

Guys packing melta wouldnt have a problem with this, but there are less and less of them these days.

Necrons wouldnt have a problem with this.



If you do take it, put a dirge caster on the land raider. Denying overwatch is the best thing ever.

The real issue I find with AV14 is a lack of consistency.

You could play a game and get nuked turn 1 by bright lances or drop pod melta...you could go strong all game without a loss.

The thing about other AV spam is that it gains strength due to the law of large numbers.

As more dice need to be rolled, you can count on the army overall to handle what it is supposed to.

Don't get me wrong...I played the triple Godhammer in Daemonhunters for a long while to great success.

I played against this kinda list. My two Railguns took them down in a single turn.

True AV14 lists don't really care about fliers, their main issue is massed melta. Ideally you build your list with enough firepower to drop FMCs or enough cheap bodies to block them from getting to you.

The issue with this list is that its not really an AV14 wall, the Battlewagons have AV12 side which makes a big difference against mobile armies, barrage, Vector Strikes etc. They also have AV10 rear, so have serious issues against fast assault units with good anti tank ability. Imo the best way to run an AV14 list is with Dark Angels, making use of the Bolter banner on Crusaders. That way you still have the anti infantry firepower you need to stop horde lists boxing you in, will ground FMCs without breaking a sweat and have Deathwing vehicle to stop lucky Lascannon hits killing Land Raiders. You can't put the Power Field inside them anymore but you actually don't need it that much anyway.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I played against this kinda list. My two Railguns took them down in a single turn.

2 Railguns taking out 3 vehicles is literally impossible....wtf?

Also, 2 s10 ap1 shots will only kill 1 AV 14 vehicle on average, IF it hits....I don't really understand your post....but lets assume you take out two of my tanks on your first turn. You now have to decide whether to use your shots to shoot at fearless mobs that will demolish your Tau in close combat or shoot at my other vehicle. Whichever you choose, I'm in combat with whatever Tau unit I want turn 2, so unless you're running 3 Riptides (which I doubt if you've taken two Hammerheads) then I'm not all that worried. Furthermore, if you've taken two HHeads and 3 Riptides you probably don't have much for troops, and whatever scoring units you have will be dead in a turn or two. I'd also like to point out that everything I have except for the HDrake is scoring, so I'll gladly ignore your Riptides and win based on objectives (which I can do 5/6 times).

Meltas are rare in my local, and when they're there people put a few in one squad (stupid, I know) so personally I'm not worried about meltas. DE are only scary if they pop every one of my tanks, which hasn't happened yet (but maybe the DE players by me suck, IDK). And I do take a dirge caster, IDK why I didn't mention that.

And this list IS an AV14 wall if positioned correctly, which I'm bright enough to do (if I do say so myself).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"And this list IS an AV14 wall if positioned correctly, which I'm bright enough to do (if I do say so myself)."

Realized I should expand on this: I move all my vehicles as fast as possible, generally, on turn one, and use the Land Raider to block any vulnerable armor on the BWagons.

People tend to focus on the 1 Heldrake once it comes in for some reason, so after turn 2 it absorbs a ton of fire.

Have you actually played against new Tau at all? While they will usually have issues punching through AV14 in the first place once they do you have to be very very lucky to actual get into combat, and even if you do its going to be with a screening unit first (which you crush and then get shot to pieces next turn). Tau will remove a 20 man Ork unit out of a transport without even thinking about it (or 7 Marines for that matter).

Your point about target saturation makes no sense, because you don't use the same weapons to deal with both AV14 and infantry, once the Wagons are open (decent bet they die first in any matchup since they are easier to kill) you put Pulse Rifle fire into the Boyz and anything that can hurt the Raider goes into that.

You might easily get into combat by turn 2, but if you do that then you definitely won't be getting any use from the Dirge Caster, and in any case it does nothing to stop Support Fire anyway. Either way it plays out pretty much the same, you push forward and jump out turn 2, you should hit a screening unit, get mauled by Overwatch, totally crush the screening unit (or fail the charge due to Overwatch hits) and then get shot down to basically nothing the next turn.

You seem to be massively overestimating your ability to target whatever you want. You have no ability to remove units unless you assault (and I might point out, there are plenty of armies which can crush 40 Orks in assault as well) and people won't just line up all their scoring units waiting to die. In reality they are going to be deployed well back (or even in reserve) if your opponent is worried about them, unless they can actually hurt vehicles reliably there isn't much point deploying them. The real issue with this list is it basically projects no threat range against a decent opponent because your damage dealers are all also highly valuable to you for actually winning the game (i.e getting objectives). Most people will be happy for you to be aggressive and assault them, since doing so puts your troops and Warlord in the open, and a good player will set it up so that you hit a less valuable unit. This list acheives basically nothing just sitting in the midfield as it has no shooting.

It doesn't matter how bright you are, the mechanics of the game don't change. If you push a long thin vehicle with AV12 sides right into someones face then you have no way to avoid giving someone side armour, its simply a question of angles.

Powerguy wrote:
Have you actually played against new Tau at all? While they will usually have issues punching through AV14 in the first place once they do you have to be very very lucky to actual get into combat

Read your whole post, but should have stopped there. Yes, my best friend plays new Tau, I face them (and every variation of their list) more than anything; you're right that they have issues punching through AV14, and the AV 14 is the strength of my list. Thank you for adding weight to my point. Furthermore, how do you claim to say I'm lucky to get into combat? I've never had a game against Tau (Farsight bomb, 3 Riptides, 2 HHeads, etc.) where I haven't got into combat with at least one unit. And if my Chaos Lord gets into combat with nearly anything in the Tau army it dies with basically no questions asked.

You're only right about one point in your post: It's a question of angles. So you position one Battlewagon on the side of your board, the other next to it, and the 14 Side armour of the LR next to that. Then you overload the Tau flank and laugh as they not only fail to kill your transports but fail to move fast enough to get more than one objective, God help them if we're playing Relic. Furthermore, good luck klling 3 AV14 vehicles AND a Heldrake with Tau and still having scoring units. Would be different if you mentioned a specific list with some helpful allies, but you didn't.

If this post was a troll, 8/10, I'm rustled. If not, 1/10 because I responded.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
After another read-through of your post, you seem to have ignore the (admittedly small) Biker unit. Yes, it has to get to combat to be effective, but they can sit on objectives and hope you try to contest them. Also, how can you say I have no way to remove anything without getting into assault? Heldrakes can wipe out half a unit of MEQs in one turn, follow that up with tons of Shoots/Big Shootas=unit obliterated. If not then let that unit of 3-4 remaining space marines shoot their bolters for a turn and die next turn. Basically this list fears (in my experience) Vendettas (like every other list) and Necrons (like most lists). Does anyone have any constructive criticism about how to better handle those lists (other than Powergurl)?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

floraljetbike wrote:
If I found the 100 pts for an ADL/Quad, would that in any way change your opinion on the list? I can't decide if it's worth it

This is mainly what I'm looking for an answer to at this point

Actually Tau can deal with battlewagons fairly easily. Heavy Burst Cannons strip hull points if novacharged off any vehicle pretty reliably especially if you transfer the buffmander to him for a turn (which most armies have floating around anyway) and unlike against Landraider armies, the HBC is very good against hordes of orks whereas its kinda bleh against MEQ.

Not to mention Riptides can get side armor pretty easy anyway, which auto-pens if Novacharged due to rending or glances if you nuked yourself trying to novacharge.

But, back to the ork's point of view.
I have very bad experience with any ork vehicle, i just find them way too easy to pop since the instant theyre penned they tend to explode being open-topped and all. No idea how many times ive had a single lascannon take out a Battlewagon, so i stopped fielding wheeled orks a long time ago. While fun, especially with rollas, its just too easy to counter.

floraljetbike wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I played against this kinda list. My two Railguns took them down in a single turn.

2 Railguns taking out 3 vehicles is literally impossible....wtf?

Also, 2 s10 ap1 shots will only kill 1 AV 14 vehicle on average, IF it hits....I don't really understand your post....but lets assume you take out two of my tanks on your first turn. You now have to decide whether to use your shots to shoot at fearless mobs that will demolish your Tau in close combat or shoot at my other vehicle. Whichever you choose, I'm in combat with whatever Tau unit I want turn 2, so unless you're running 3 Riptides (which I doubt if you've taken two Hammerheads) then I'm not all that worried. Furthermore, if you've taken two HHeads and 3 Riptides you probably don't have much for troops, and whatever scoring units you have will be dead in a turn or two. I'd also like to point out that everything I have except for the HDrake is scoring, so I'll gladly ignore your Riptides and win based on objectives (which I can do 5/6 times).

Meltas are rare in my local, and when they're there people put a few in one squad (stupid, I know) so personally I'm not worried about meltas. DE are only scary if they pop every one of my tanks, which hasn't happened yet (but maybe the DE players by me suck, IDK). And I do take a dirge caster, IDK why I didn't mention that.

And this list IS an AV14 wall if positioned correctly, which I'm bright enough to do (if I do say so myself).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"And this list IS an AV14 wall if positioned correctly, which I'm bright enough to do (if I do say so myself)."

Realized I should expand on this: I move all my vehicles as fast as possible, generally, on turn one, and use the Land Raider to block any vulnerable armor on the BWagons.

People tend to focus on the 1 Heldrake once it comes in for some reason, so after turn 2 it absorbs a ton of fire.

I also had my Nova charge ion accelerator, and you are correct, My broadsides actually took one out, with side armor.

Drop 3 Zoanthropes in a pod. Warp lance ST10 AP1, lance. Armour doesn't stand a chance

 Schwarmfuhrer wrote:
Drop 3 Zoanthropes in a pod. Warp lance ST10 AP1, lance. Armour doesn't stand a chance

This is why I like running Av14 with my gk.

Coteaz + cheap henchman means you can still get a lot of bodies + 3 raiders in a standard list, add a strike squad or two and now the raiders are protected by warp quake, IBEY and maybe a quad gun/icarus nearbye. Having deepstrike protection makes it a viable list imo, not ineradicable but decent enough

I think the problem with yours OP is that battlewagons are only 14 on the front, so a good opponent should be able to exploit their sides/rear. Yes you can deploy on a flank and protect yourself with the landraider, but then whoever you are against can just focus their T1 fire on the raider and hopefully kill it, leaving the wagons exposed for the rest of the game.

I think the success rate of Av14 really depends on your local meta, for me, lots have swapped their melta to plasma, so by taking 3 raiders or whatever I am bringing a good list, in an area with lots of melta though, not to sure if its a good tactic.

There was nothing in that post that would suggest I was trolling, I explained all my points pretty well, your loss if you choose to ignore them. I might point out that you haven't said you have a Heldrake in that list at any point, just that AV14 is nice because you can ignore your opponents Drakes. In practice it doesn't change the issues the list has that much, but yes it does give you ways to chase off small objective camper units. Heldrakes make any list better.

If you play a Tau opponent who knows what he is doing and has the tools to open your transports (the Raider is a problem, but Wagons always can you just have to deploy well to counter them) then yes you should be lucky to hit combat. With proper appreciation of threat ranges the Tau player isn't going to give you any easy charges, they should always be 7"+, ideally into terrain. When you combine that with Supporting Fire Overwatch taking off the front rank/s on standard infantry units without Fleet then yes you should fail quite a few charges, and then get shot to hell by Rapid Fire Pulse Rifles. My main point was that most people would actually be happy with you disembarking, because it gives them easy and obvious targets (the only reason people are trying to open the transports in the first place is to get to the scoring units and damage dealers inside, disembarking does that job for them).

Of course any one of these units hitting combat against Tau is going to win combat/kill a unit, but that's the point. Your Chaos Lord is welcome to turn any one unit he chooses into tiny pieces, but next turn he isn't going to be locked in combat and is always going to get torrented off the board. The only assault based lists I have seen do well against Tau are ones with either heaps of units (so they can absorb most of the overwatch with 1, then pile in with the rest) or ones with insanely durable units (Screamer Council, JetCouncil).

Deploying badly is the easiest way to lose a game. If you deploy first, and centrally then the Tau player can put Broadsides etc on either flank, and put S7 into the side armour from both flanks which you have no way to block. If you deploy loaded on a flank then the Tau player can put 1 squad of Broadsides in the corner (literally in the corner, so still 3 turns or so just to get to them) straight across from you and the rest of his army diagonally across from you (with the plan of spreading along the short edge). If you go for the main force then the Broadsides eventually get side arc, and it takes you till turn 4 to get to him. If you go for the smaller force then you give side arc to the main force for at least a turn, and will struggle to get to the main force in time to do anything anyway. If you split up then he can fire across his flanks (so the guys in the main force shoot the vehicles going for the smaller force and vice versa).

I have started building the Land Raider Bolter Banner list I mentioned above partially as a counter to Tau, and I know from experience that it causes serious issues to the builds the top Tau players are running. This list on the other hand I think they would be pretty happy fighting against, just play safe, probably kill both the Wagons and the Heldrake over the course of the game and completely demolish any of your infantry units that disembark. With a Comms Relay to avoid the Drake and Kroot able to Outflank you won't get his scoring units, and he can bring on his Fire Warriors just as you get up close to his Broadsides turn 3 or so ready to Rapid Fire.

 Schwarmfuhrer wrote:
Drop 3 Zoanthropes in a pod. Warp lance ST10 AP1, lance. Armour doesn't stand a chance

Good, Zoanthropes drown in wounds next turn and the rest of my transports get 18 in closer or close enough for me to assault next turn. You took three pods of Zoanthropes? Good, all three units are dead or locked in combat which means my troops cant be shot, and my pikers are free to take out whatever token troops you have (none that threatening if you have points invested in 9 Zoanthropes).

@Tulman: They can focus their t10 fire (if they have it) and, like you said, HOPEFULLY pop the raider. Even if they do, it's my least vulnerable unit in the open and I have another turn to get the boyz closer. And I see very little melta, as previously stated, so I'm not that worried.

@Vineheart: "way too easy to pop" is an illogical statement. Let's say there are 3 s10 ap 1 shots at BS 4 coming at one. 2 will hit, only 1 will do any damage. even if it pens, (only 33% chance), theres still only a 50% chance it pops. If there's a practical army with more than 3 s10 ap1 shots I'd love to hear about it.

@Powergurl: If they Tau player is far enough away and into cover that I can't assault he's going to have a hell of a time taking objectives when the time comes, and keep in mind assaulting is only plan b, ideally I'll drown all those Fire Warriors or Kroot in dakka from the open topped vehicles. I'll gladly send my Lord after your Riptides. Feel free to run away from him and therefore my transports. Riptides, even when taken in threes, are not gamebreakers. Plus your Riptide costs more than literally any unit I have on the board, so I'll gladly tarpit them with anything I have. Or I'll let my Heldrake and abundance of shots wear them down. Please get the 3++ instead of nova charging, I'm that much less worried about them now.
"next turn he isn't locked in combat and is going to get torrented off the board" by what? A few Warrior/Kroot squads? Statistically unlikely unless you get your harder hitting units in on it, which, again, means they're not shooting at the armor.

Also, I can't help but notice a lot of the comments assume I need or want the transports to survive all game. As long as two of them survive long enough to get one of my units in combat any Tau gunline is breached, then the player has to decide what to focus his real threats on and quick, otherwise the HDrake is in and his troops are fried if he doesn't focus fire it like crazy. This is not even considering that if you have 3 Riptides your troops are most likely underwhelming, at least in term of kill power if not numbers. Plus, my extensive experience against Tau has proven they are not as scary against this list as you theory-hammerers think it would be. So, does anyone have experience taking on 3 or more av14 vehicles succcessfully, besides the guy who claims 2 guns took out three vehicles turn 1?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, still didn't get an answer to the only question I really want answered at this point: should I find the 100 points for a quadADL, or is it not worth it?

I think AV 14 vehicles are quite good in 6th edition.

The problems I see are: Gauss weapons, flying MC, Vendettas, and probably horde armies, because army lists riding land raiders don't kill that much stuff.

3 zoans + a pod is 220pts. they will regularly take our way more than 220 pts so for their points you cant go wrong

Given that the most expensive a single model I usually use in my BA list is a 135 pt predator, that won't be case against my list. Feel free to come down and lance my discount razorback.

I seriously doubt a Tyranid TAC list has 3X3 zoanthropes in spores.

In a recent local tournament I came up against a Templars player who was fielding a list with 4 Land Raiders. Like myself, he was undefeated at that point, as people had a complete lack of options to deal with that much AV14 against him. He mentioned that in the three previous games, he'd lost only three land raiders in total.

I managed to get the win, but only because I play Eldar, and had a whole slurry of options - I rolled Eldrich storm (haywire) on Eldrad, I had a squad of swooping hawks with haywire grenades, I had two crimson hunters and I also had two bright lances in my two guardian squads.

So yeah, they can totally be effective against an unprepared opponent. Just be ready to get your butt handed to you by someone that turns up with the right tools.

floraljetbike wrote:
*starts giving counterexamples to every point people make*

Floral, you asked how effective AV 14 spam is. People are giving their opinions and giving a few scenarios where they are weak. You just keep giving counterexamples of how they are wrong and your army will overcome this because of such and such.
You keep arguing that how people will deal with your army would not work, maybe its just me, but instead of arguing how your list would compensate for everything possibility, maybe you should just accept the possible weakness that every army has to deal with.
In my opinion (and I may be way off) it seems like you are just trying to argue against anyone that is trying to point out potential weaknesses, then explaining to everyone how none of those weaknesses would matter because you will counter them with such and such tactic. Maybe its just me (again, could be way off), but it seems like you are kind of being disrespectful, calling people "trolls" and other "wtf" comments.

Now, I don't mean for the following argument to be ad hominem, but seeing as your first tournament was last Saturday (if you still went to that tournament), and you did not seem to play this list, maybe you should take the advice people are giving you, as many of them have played faaaaaar longer than just a year.

Best of luck with your list though, I play C:SM Crimson fists and use 3 godhammer land raiders filled with sternguard and Pedro Kantor to make em' scoring and do fairly fair.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yes the ADL is almost ALWAYS worth it if you are dealing with flyers, just be careful to not make that your ONLY way (though it is still probably going to be your best way), as the other guy could put a building smack dab in front of it since buildings get placed after the ADL would.

Belly wrote:
In a recent local tournament I came up against a Templars player who was fielding a list with 4 Land Raiders. Like myself, he was undefeated at that point, as people had a complete lack of options to deal with that much AV14 against him. He mentioned that in the three previous games, he'd lost only three land raiders in total.

I managed to get the win, but only because I play Eldar, and had a whole slurry of options - I rolled Eldrich storm (haywire) on Eldrad, I had a squad of swooping hawks with haywire grenades, I had two crimson hunters and I also had two bright lances in my two guardian squads.

So yeah, they can totally be effective against an unprepared opponent. Just be ready to get your butt handed to you by someone that turns up with the right tools.

Well said. Do you think it makes a difference that the Battlewagons are basically just mobile firing platforms? The Swooping Hawks, for instance, would likely be shot down before they could use the haywire grenades. The Guardians would be taking shots as the Vehicles get closer. If the Hunters didn't take out all the vehicles, a few stray Big Shoota shots would knock them out of the air (although that's a big if, admittedly). I think the BWagons have that advantage over Raiders. Do you have experience facing Wagons with that kind of eldar list?

And with my godhammer list I get taken to the cleaners when playing Necron, Eldar, and a MOTF dread drop list ( so much destruction). I do good to great against most of the other lists in my meta, especially against tyranid BUT that is only because of my sternguard, they love to much up MCs.

 Ryan_A wrote:

floraljetbike wrote:
*starts giving counterexamples to every point people make*

Floral, you asked how effective AV 14 spam is. People are giving their opinions and giving a few scenarios where they are weak. You just keep giving counterexamples of how they are wrong and your army will overcome this because of such and such.
You keep arguing that how people will deal with your army would not work, maybe its just me, but instead of arguing how your list would compensate for everything possibility, maybe you should just accept the possible weakness that every army has to deal with.
In my opinion (and I may be way off) it seems like you are just trying to argue against anyone that is trying to point out potential weaknesses, then explaining to everyone how none of those weaknesses would matter because you will counter them with such and such tactic. Maybe its just me (again, could be way off), but it seems like you are kind of being disrespectful, calling people "trolls" and other "wtf" comments.

Now, I don't mean for the following argument to be ad hominem, but seeing as your first tournament was last Saturday (if you still went to that tournament), and you did not seem to play this list, maybe you should take the advice people are giving you, as many of them have played faaaaaar longer than just a year.

Best of luck with your list though, I play C:SM Crimson fists and use 3 godhammer land raiders filled with sternguard and Pedro Kantor to make em' scoring and do fairly fair.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yes the ADL is almost ALWAYS worth it if you are dealing with flyers, just be careful to not make that your ONLY way (though it is still probably going to be your best way), as the other guy could put a building smack dab in front of it since buildings get placed after the ADL would.

Not really trying to be disrespectful, trying to spark real debate and move people away from the "Riptides ruin everyones day" argument that people on this board constantly make. Also, I'm trying to hear real examples as opposed to people who assume a few s10 shots will actually deconstruct an av14 vehicle. This is statistically not the case, and, in my experience, rarely happens. Furthermore, I don't know why you would assume that since I've been to zero tournaments (first is this saturday) and will take a different list that my experience is negligible. Also, I played Warhammer back in 4th, but that experience is irrelevant to my other post so I felt it was not worth bringing up. Is bringing up irrelevant posts in outside threads a common thing on this board? If so, why? Perhaps I've chosen the wrong place to try to gain insight into the game

floraljetbike wrote:
Well said. Do you think it makes a difference that the Battlewagons are basically just mobile firing platforms? The Swooping Hawks, for instance, would likely be shot down before they could use the haywire grenades. The Guardians would be taking shots as the Vehicles get closer. If the Hunters didn't take out all the vehicles, a few stray Big Shoota shots would knock them out of the air (although that's a big if, admittedly). I think the BWagons have that advantage over Raiders. Do you have experience facing Wagons with that kind of eldar list?

I've only played against Orks a single time. It happened to be in the same tournament, and I believe he had a single battlewagon. Loads of trukks though. I think I blew up the wagon halfway across the board, leaving the boyz to footslog. I'd definitely have issues stopping a 2nd or 3rd wagon from reaching my troop however. Luckily for me, that game was killpoints, which really suited my army in that matchup.

Back to that Templars game. My hawks had free reign, as I DS them on the flank he was keeping his vanilla raider (the lascannon one). The other three were crusaders (? the hurricane bolter ones). Due to this, I was able to use the raider for LOS cover, and he didn't want to waste lascannon shots on light infantry. Nobody ever shoots my hawks. They always under estimate them, and their annoyance value.

However, thank you for commenting on my ADL question.

"My list is awesome beacuse X, none of the things that counter it work because Y, Z"

Every codex has an answer to AV14 spam. Not all of them are very good, or included in strong lists, but they all have one.

Honourable mention to ramming speed with their own high-av (hammerheads, russes, etc) to keep you away from the infantry and proceeding to table you.

In this kind of list the Quad Gun is just going to get left behind and its a very easy target. Realistically a single Quad Gun isn't going to make that much of a difference against a flier heavy list unless you can a) keep it alive and b) have something else buffing it so whatever it shoots dies reliably (i.e Dark Reapers preventing Jink saves, or something with Tank Hunters).

How many Fire Warriors does your friend usually run? Fire Warriors and Kroot really will do that much damage to T4 infantry, 12 Fire Warriors in Rapid Fire range with an Ethernal buff (or just 2 smaller squads of Fire Warriors if you prefer) do 36 shots, 18 hits, 12 wounds, 4 failed saves = your Lord dead if he is by himself. A single Markerlight brings that up to 5 wounds on MEQ. Admittedly that includes the Ethernal but then most Tau lists tend to run one. Either way that is impressive firepower from only a single squad, realistically you expect to see 2-4 units of Fire Warriors and 2-3 units of Kroot (depends on points level and personal preference) who will happily mow down the entire squad of Marines and the Lord without having any impact on the Tau ability to crack vehicles. This is why I'm assuming you want to keep the transports alive and not get out of them, because doing so should result in the squad dying.

Note that I am not suggesting that Tau are good against AV14 by stretch. Its just that the way that this list is configured it has no really punch if you stay in the vehicles (40 Boyz and a single Heldrake), which gives Tau an obvious path to deal with it.

floraljetbike wrote: Is bringing up irrelevant posts in outside threads a common thing on this board? If so, why? Perhaps I've chosen the wrong place to try to gain insight into the game

First, a person's experience is never irrelevant, the length of time a person has played this game will give them exponentially more knowledge about different lists in every army. Why did I bring up the length of time you played? Simple: a year or even 3 years is a very limited amount of time to have played a game such as this, I've been playing since 1999 (since about 6 years old haha) and still have not played against most of the most popular lists today. And about the whole "perhaps I've chosen the wrong place to try to gain insight into the game" thing, maybe you have, this is a good place for good information, but calling people trolls and being disrespectful does not belong here. Whether or not you are trying to be disrespectful, it is kinda coming off that way.

floraljetbike wrote:However, thank you for commenting on my ADL question.

NP, its a pretty good setup, read up on special characters, especially those who can chose who to wound and give good re-rolls or extra rolls, usually every army has one or two of these guys (ie. Telion in C:SM) and they can kick ass with the ADL, especially when aiming it at a unit with an HQ hiding.

A little Mathhammer:
S10 AP1 vs AV14 (assuming a hit) (not open top): there is a 25% of destroying the vehicle.
S8 AP1 Melta vs AV14 (assuming hit and not open topped): there is a 40% chance of destroying the vehicle
So you will be in danger if a group of 3 melta attack bikes or the like get to you fast. Just remember, the closer you get to your enemy, the more stuff they get to pop that AV14, though by that time you will probably have transported your elite units across the board safely.

Edited because I suck at grammar.