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please tell me there are other players who hate fighting against cultists? they are easy to kill but they are cheap can shoot back and there are so bloody many of them that they just soak up fire power. in effect they are one big meat sheild.

only have this little rant because i lost to my brother last night and he was using 20 of the little buggers. anyone got any idea on how to move around these guys? they held up my redeemer full of vets last night because they were sitting on an objective i couldnt tank shock because of the big emperor statue sitting in the way.

anything you could suggest in mopping these up nice and quickly would be grand. im a DA player by the way

I play CSM and occasionally use cultists, but if I was to get rid of them it would be:

1. Use template weapons (such as flamers) and ignore cover weapons.
2. Charge them with a small squad of something that they can't hurt/will find it tough to hurt (bikers spring to mind) assuming they don't have a fearless HQ in tow, all you need to do is inflict more casualties then they do on you and sweep them away!

it always seems so simple but i get really frustrated!! there is this one cultist my brother has called the Target, i couldnt kill him i mowed down the 20 of them with tac marines with a heavy bolter in tow he was the last one left thought to myself "might as well get rid of him that crusader doesnt have anything to fire at. lets fire him" twin linked assault cannons missed... fantastic so naturally i thought well now i need to kill him Dreadnaught with twin linked Lascannon... missed.. now i got wound up, asked a favour from my mate who was using Guard, basalisked the little runt... missed again... i had 1 unit left in range my seargent with a plasma pistol. it got hot he died. target didnt. he ended up surviving the whole game he got a lucky shot in the next turn and ended up as a deamon prince... i could have cried. anyway this little guy is impossible for me to kill most games so id prefer to ignore him. thoroughly ignore him.

iirc you can't get chaos rewards outside of a duel. Anywayz, sounds more of a dice problem rather than tactical one.

I find my unit of 26 cultists + a HQ does really well.

Something like a big mob of boyz and a PK nob is somwthing they don't like, though.

My boyz and guardsmen have the common fear as cultists: flamers.

Flamers, Flamestorm and any template weapons it is then guys, i thought about this but i just hate how much they slow you down, in apoc my borther fields 80 of the sodding things as his vanguard which leaves a bunch of beserkers reletively unscathed behind him

MrBlackledge wrote:it always seems so simple but i get really frustrated!! there is this one cultist my brother has called the Target, i couldnt kill him i mowed down the 20 of them with tac marines with a heavy bolter in tow he was the last one left thought to myself "might as well get rid of him that crusader doesnt have anything to fire at. lets fire him" twin linked assault cannons missed... fantastic so naturally i thought well now i need to kill him Dreadnaught with twin linked Lascannon... missed.. now i got wound up, asked a favour from my mate who was using Guard, basalisked the little runt... missed again... i had 1 unit left in range my seargent with a plasma pistol. it got hot he died. target didnt. he ended up surviving the whole game he got a lucky shot in the next turn and ended up as a deamon prince... i could have cried. anyway this little guy is impossible for me to kill most games so id prefer to ignore him. thoroughly ignore him.

Did the one guy not fail any moral checks or anything? But damn, the dice god were not on your side that day!

koooaei wrote:iirc you can't get chaos rewards outside of a duel. Anywayz, sounds more of a dice problem rather than tactical one.

Pretty sure you can. Its as long as the Chaos character kills/contributes to its death from unsaved wounds which kills the target you gain a chaos boon (yay)
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/515174.page

Take a Tau ally...Riptide....Nova Generator on the heavy burst cannon....12 wounds a round against cultist with a little lucky rolling

Sounds like more of a bad luck rant than a cultist rant I play with some cultists occasionally they pretty much die to anything. If they aren't being baby sat by an HQ they are pretty terrible in cc. They die in droves to pretty much any cc squad that charges them. Even if you don't kill the entire squad they will lose they combat by so much they are really likely to fail the Ld check. With I3 you got a pretty good chance at sweeping the rest of them.

They do make pretty sweet objective holders in your own table half, especially if you put them in area terrain/cover and go to ground.

I like cultists as objective holders but past that need a babysitter. Zombies are worth far more in my opinion.

Aha yeah zombies are made of win

He only had twenty?

 captsabre wrote:

Pretty sure you can. Its as long as the Chaos character kills/contributes to its death from unsaved wounds which kills the target you get a chaos boon.

This would only count for the Champion. Highly unlikely that he'd be last man standing.

And just 20 of them is a really low amount. I usually run a blob of 35 with an Apostel or 2x 20 and make them zombies with Typhus. These are way more anoying then normal cultists.

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:

 captsabre wrote:

Pretty sure you can. Its as long as the Chaos character kills/contributes to its death from unsaved wounds which kills the target you get a chaos boon.

This would only count for the Champion. Highly unlikely that he'd be last man standing.

My bad, I assumed that the champion was the last guy remaining because he turned into the DP, which if he was is correct.

Otherwise hell no it shouldn't have done. Id love to take cultists if their was a change every single one of them could turn into a DP

A unit comprised mostly of dudes relying on t-shirt saves, yeah, I'm going with flamers. Any template weapon will do really, blasts will do the trick but that beautiful flamer/firestorm template will ruin their day with a quickness.

Also, I liked the idea that someone posted about bikers, or a small hardy unit that will just chew through them given time. Might be a better way than relying on templates.

Don't charge them with something that's good at killing cultists.

Charge them with something that's good at killing a chaos lord. Tool up a character to be able to throttle his lord. He HAS to challenge you, so if you can win that challenge, you're winning combat by a few points, and the cultists should run off.

I field 60 of them with my Slaanesh Noisemarine army - they're great!

Can Dark Angels take Thunderfire Cannons or Whirlwinds? If yes, use those.

 j31c3n wrote:
Can Dark Angels take Thunderfire Cannons or Whirlwinds? If yes, use those.

As a Bloblover, TFC's are hell. Like he said, try one out.

 Sparkadia wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:
Can Dark Angels take Thunderfire Cannons or Whirlwinds? If yes, use those.

As a Bloblover, TFC's are hell. Like he said, try one out.

Thunderfire Cannons are amazing for their low points cost. 3 ammunition types, 60" range Heavy 4 Barrage, toughness 7 artillery piece... and as a bonus, it's manned by a Techmarine, so he can turn any ruin you can place the unit inside into a fortification, granting your blobkiller artillery a 3+ cover save. And that's not even getting into all the other wargear the Techmarine comes strapped with.

 j31c3n wrote:

 Sparkadia wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:
Can Dark Angels take Thunderfire Cannons or Whirlwinds? If yes, use those.

As a Bloblover, TFC's are hell. Like he said, try one out.

Thunderfire Cannons are amazing for their low points cost. 3 ammunition types, 60" range Heavy 4 Barrage, toughness 7 artillery piece... and as a bonus, it's manned by a Techmarine, so he can turn any ruin you can place the unit inside into a fortification, granting your blobkiller artillery a 3+ cover save. And that's not even getting into all the other wargear the Techmarine comes strapped with.

I've had many days ruined with a good TFC barrage. The most legit option for blobmurder. Plus, it never has to be in threat, just plop in out of LoS at your far side of the board and wham-bam no risk Barrages all over faces, all day.

MrBlackledge wrote:only have this little rant because i lost to my brother last night and he was using 20 of the little buggers. anyone got any idea on how to move around these guys?

Firstly, as others are mentioning, 20 cultists isn't very scary. On the one hand, they can come in larger squads and, on the other, they could have instead been a guard infantry platoon, or a boy mob, or anything else much, much scarier. Apart from possibly gretchin, chaos cultists are the worst horde unit. If you can't handle them, then you're not going to be able to handle real horde units.

MrBlackledge wrote: they held up my redeemer full of vets last night because they were sitting on an objective i couldnt tank shock because of the big emperor statue sitting in the way.

Well, here's your first problem. Stop using a redeemer. That is, by far, the worst land raider. If you want to run a land raider, run a real one with lascannons, and have something else be good against hordes.

MrBlackledge wrote:anything you could suggest in mopping these up nice and quickly would be grand. im a DA player by the way

... or, because you're DA, bring the Murderbox. Run a crusader with an HQ inside with the salvo banner. That's 24 BS4 TL bolter shots per turn. That will thin out cultists REAL damn fast.

Otherwise, DA should have no problems whatsoever handling a horde, what with being cheap MEq and getting salvo bolters to boot. The only time you could be having a problem is if you're min-maxing and thus basically forgetting to bring any bolt weapons in a space marine list. Make your list a tiny bit more balanced, and this problem should solve itself. Alternately, if you brought enough bolters, then you're just not using them well enough.

Plus, MEq generally outclass horde units in close combat, and they will certainly do this against cultists. Extra especially if they're running around in a transport with an assault ramp. Assuming that you shoot bolt pistols and the cultists don't get a cover save (or that you can focus fire well enough), then 10 marines will kill about 4.5 cultists with pistols and another 7.5 in close combat before the cultists even get to swing. The remaining 8 cultists will be no match whatsoever for the 10 marines after that.

In any case, this sounds like more of a problem you're having with fundamentals, and less a problem that the game has with cultists.

Why are you...WHY are you scared of 20 cultists??? Like...when I started reading I was expecting you to say 60 cultists cannon fodding while demon princes flying around and unicorns deep striking and there's thousand sons behind them marching up....

20 cultists? I think ANY shooting can take them. Just bolter at them, if there's a character in there go in with a beatstick captain and fight him. There's NOTHING you need to be scared of...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brother Lem wrote:
Take a Tau ally...Riptide....Nova Generator on the heavy burst cannon....12 wounds a round against cultist with a little lucky rolling

12 wounds is very unlikely...a nova charged HBC is also super dangerous...

[quote=
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brother Lem wrote:
Take a Tau ally...Riptide....Nova Generator on the heavy burst cannon....12 wounds a round against cultist with a little lucky rolling

12 wounds is very unlikely...a nova charged HBC is also super dangerous...

 koooaei wrote:
iirc you can't get chaos rewards outside of a duel. Anywayz, sounds more of a dice problem rather than tactical one.

Common misconception, but not true. Champion of Chaos rule states the guy with it simply needs to kill an enemy character. Doesn't specify a phase.

Yeah, I knew someone who went around with champions with dual-wielded plasma pistols, because there was a roughly 1/6 chance every time he got to shoot them that he'd get to roll on the boon table.

He eventually stopped because boon fishing is better when you make a serious effort of it, and because two plasma pistols per champ was getting kind of expensive...

 Ailaros wrote:
Yeah, I knew someone who went around with champions with dual-wielded plasma pistols, because there was a roughly 1/6 chance every time he got to shoot them that he'd get to roll on the boon table.

He eventually stopped because boon fishing is better when you make a serious effort of it, and because two plasma pistols per champ was getting kind of expensive..

Is boon fishing even really worth it? I mean over taking out a special weapon/heavy weapon/banner etc.

Just wondered on your thoughts thats all

Last time I used Marbo. He than had nice cogaretta on heap of 10 cultist bodies...last two killed by his trusty dagger...

But seriously. Just use templates. Flamers, pieplates...they can soak damage but there are limits.

Cultists are really only good with a Lord (for fearless) or as Plague Zombies (for fearless and FnP).

The thing is overall cultists are considerably less scary than Imperial Guard Infantry. Basically same cost per model (50 points gets a squad of 9 dudes and a sarge, same as cultists), except the Imperial Guard can take more weapons, better weapons, and have better special abilities and internal synergies, orders, commissars, blob squads etc. What cultists do is bring cheap light infantry into a Space Marine army, which is useful for claiming objectives and what have you, but their firepower is really pathetic, and they become overall more expensive than Guardsmen if they take Auto Guns.

Space Marines are battle brothers with IG, so if you just want to ally in Guardsmen your light infantry support will demolish his. Otherwise Whilwinds and Thunder Fire Cannons make a bloody mess out of cultists. If they aren't fearless, or you have a character who can take out the Chaos Lord in a challenge, they will crumble to most any unit you can throw at them in assault. At tops they have a flamer and a smattering of s3 to overwatch with.

Cultists really aren't that scary. They just try their very hardest to screen more important units or claim objectives, and if they can pull off those tasks they are generally worth it.