Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello.

I will be playing a tournament against an Imperial army that will be taking at least one superheavy - most likely a Baneblade.

What is the best tactic to get rid of it?

I was thinking of Lysander with squad of Assault Terminators with TH/SS and/or a couple of lascannons/plasma cannons in a Devestator Squad.

I also had thoughts of Sternguard with combi meltas and infiltrating landpeeders with multimeltas.

Are there any better strategies?

Drop pod + melta Stern seems to be one of the easiest. though you might run into bubble wrap issues.

You could try that in conjunction with a suicide lv2 psyker with hopes of vortex.

As well you could probably get away with bike command squads with meltaguns and bombs.

For the most part its not just one answer. you will need a little bit of everything.

Try to flank around for side armor.

Melta is not the answer. Grav is. Bike squads with grav guns and multi-melta attack bike. centurions w/ grav stuff in a transport.

Flyers are the other answer, since bane blade can't really target them.

not sure if you know what you're up against. 14/13/12 w/ 9 hull points, a S9 AP2 Apocalyptic Blast, with a demolisher cannon and other guns to boot. Everything can pick different targets. No weapon can be destroyed.

As a guard player, here's a little insight in what you will probably face.

1) Bubble Wrap - No guard player leaves home without it. Atleast 30+ guardsmen surrounding the tank so you can't get within 6" or charge it.

2) Cover - Aegis Defense line at the least. This will negate half of your shots.

3) Re-rolls - Primaris Psyker with divination will give him re-rolls to hit on all guns. Expect much pie death.

How to counter:

1) Cover. Bring an Aegis, you're going to need it.

2) Flyers. Can't shoot them with blasts. Storm Eagles would do nice.

3) Your own Super Heavy. You have a couple options here. Fell blade, Laser Land Raider thingy, etc. Beware the shadowsword though, he can potentially pop a super heavy in 1 hit with that variant.

4) don't leave your guys exposed. If you deploy turn one with a bunch of power armor in no vehicle, they will booooomed. If you put them in a rhino, they will survive one more round.

Good Luck.

I highly doubt an aegis can cover a relevant portion of a superheavy...

I would go for an Orbital Bombardment in turn one, then good old attrition from many many lascannons and other Heavy weapons

The best way to deal with super heavies is to make it kill 35 pt rhino transports and parts of TAC squads so it never makes it's pts back.

Do not hide behind an ADL as the AM player will utterly out shoot you at that range.

Regular grav weapons are also a terrible way to kill a super heavy as you cannot immobilize it. It takes 30 grav guns to kill a baneblade on average. That is most armies entire grav weapon supply for 5 turns... A cent star of 6 grav cannons can almost do it in one turn but only with Prescience, so not cheap and likely to be tarpit next turn.

If you really want to kill it then you want a combined approach with something to eat away the bubble wrap unit and a unit to kill the super heavy. That or your own super heavy. I recommend just designing your list to mostly ignore it and only go for the kill if he leaves it exposed.

I reckon a Fellblade would give it a run for it's money mind.

S9 Armourbane is a lot more likely to crack armour than just S9. Also, both have the demolisher cannon

 ansacs wrote:
The best way to deal with super heavies is to make it kill 35 pt rhino transports and parts of TAC squads so it never makes it's pts back.

This. Turn the Baneblade into a 500+ point paperweight by never giving it any expensive targets to shoot at. If that 10" blast hits a 5-man tactical squad in cover it's killing ~30 points per turn, or ~200 points over an entire 7-turn game. Baneblades aren't really scary unless you have big expensive units for it to wipe off the table. Avoid giving it that kind of target and the best the IG can hope for it to do is soak up a lot of firepower that would have otherwise killed a more important unit.

 IHateNids wrote:
I reckon a Fellblade would give it a run for it's money mind.

S9 Armourbane is a lot more likely to crack armour than just S9. Also, both have the demolisher cannon

The Fellblade is awful as a Baneblade counter. Yeah, it has a decent chance of penetrating AV 14, but it (usually) only takes off 1 HP per turn. That's way too slow to be relevant. Meanwhile the IG player has an abundance of anti-tank units to kill vehicles with, and their Baneblade is primarily an anti-infantry unit and bullet magnet. It's only going to shoot its big gun at a vehicle if there's nothing else to kill.

If you want to take a Fellblade you treat it the same way: as an anti-infantry unit with a huge pie plate that can also take a shot at a vehicle if you really need it. And now that you have a big anti-MEQ pie plate (that is twin-linked so it rarely misses) you can worry less about how to kill infantry and focus the rest of your army more heavily on other roles.

Shadow blade, lascannon and AT missile aircraft like the lightning. A lot of heavy vehicles with lascannon weapons. Sicaran Venators.

You got it all wrong mate. you dont want heavy units with AT guns, you want the cheaper glasshammers.
All that bulk is doing you no good against a superheavy, but giving him too many lousy targets who can in turn threaten him-is his nightmare.

Thank you for your suggestions but I don't have any fliers or superheavies of my own...

We are playing 1500pt game and my initial army is here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/626631.page

I have also just realised that when deepstriking, you can't assault so Lysander would have a turn which he is doing nothing - is this correct?

Also would two squads of LOD carrying meltas be better then sternguard in a pod?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BoomWolf wrote:
You got it all wrong mate. you dont want heavy units with AT guns, you want the cheaper glasshammers.
All that bulk is doing you no good against a superheavy, but giving him too many lousy targets who can in turn threaten him-is his nightmare.

What glasshammers would you suggest?

Please note that I will also be using this squad to face tyranids and eldar - if you see the link I posted above, I have a lot of heavy units with AT guns like you said which could be overwhelmed on second thought.

Yes, squads of LotD with Melta are awesome and worth taking in place of Podding Sternguard. LotD also ignore cover from jink and Serpent Shields. However, Podding Sternguard have more Melta shots on the turn they arrive, giving them an advantage of both placement (Pods) and overwhelming firepower (for one turn).

SJ

at 1500 points him taking a baneblade is a really dumb choice. half of his force is gonna be taken up by his super heavy. the best idea would be to take MSU and camp objectives. If the mission id purge the alien then droppoding melta would be good. IDK how effective it would be but cheap dreads or iroclads with meltas or chain fists might work too. just a thought.

 GKTiberius wrote:
at 1500 points him taking a baneblade is a really dumb choice. half of his force is gonna be taken up by his super heavy. the best idea would be to take MSU and camp objectives. If the mission id purge the alien then droppoding melta would be good. IDK how effective it would be but cheap dreads or iroclads with meltas or chain fists might work too. just a thought.

Half? More like a third at the most. He can still have plenty of defenses in line to support it.

but that would be his entire force. One Huge tank and a support force. In a mission where objectives need to be taken or points need to be captured, that would be a highly ineffective list. if he pops the tank or destroys a portion of its support the army will fall apart. that 500+ points would be better spent on forces that can be divided to achieve tactical objectives.

As usual with marines, bikes are the best choice. White scars jink and keep good spacing and he'll be barely hurting you with the baneblade on the way in. Guard suck at CC so feel free to hop from assault to assault with FNP if the cover is more favorable in that way. Disordered charges are fine, since you don't necessarily want his squads to explode the second you touch them. Melta is great, either stacked in a command squad or just floating around in 3x melta regular troop squads. Obviously Chapter Master Smashfether will make an appearance. He'll probably have Pask too, which honestly is a more troublesome tank than the baneblade, and is worth more points if you consider his squadron mate. So if you see pask, actually go for him first. Get close, fast. a lot of guard artillery can't fire up close, and your twin linked boltguns can reap a toll of dead guardsmen if you expose their side of the aegis line or ruins or whatever. Should be a pretty easy matchup, actually, if you take bikes.

Just pray he doesn't take plasma-spam Forward Sentries and infilitrate them up to the 2+ levels on buildings. Pure bikers don't really have an answer for that.

To be honest, a baneblade isn't all that different from its equivalent points cost in conventional tanks.

If you army is capable of tanking out AM tanks normally, then a they should do just fine vs a baneblade.

Grav is not as good in this role, but melta bikes and pods will work just the same. Krak grenades in melee still work too.

 Silverthorne wrote:
Just pray he doesn't take plasma-spam Forward Sentries and infilitrate them up to the 2+ levels on buildings. Pure bikers don't really have an answer for that.

Of course they do, they drive their bikes up to the second level and slaughter the guardsmen. This isn't 6th anymore, there's no such thing as levels in ruins and bikes/vehicles/etc can go wherever the model can fit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Silverthorne wrote:
a lot of guard artillery can't fire up close

All of it can fire up close. This isn't 5th anymore, barrage weapons with a "minimum range" just don't get to subtract their BS from the scatter distance inside the "minimum range".

Wait really? we can wheelee up to the 3rd floor and drop kick some scrubs?

I didn't know you could drive up on to the 2nd level of ruins now. GTK

Manticores can't fire direct. Only artillery I ever see are manticores or that new one, the 4 barrelled mortar thing.

With the list you posted this match is going to depend a lot on terrain and the competence level of the guard player. If you get a lot of terrain and space out you can probably pull off a win by scaring him into turtling his force up to protect it from the sternguard and lysander.

You have some tactical problems that are evident in your list.
1) You don't get to choose when the sternguard come down as you have 1 drop pod. This means the sternguard will come down alone turn 1 without any support and without any chance to use other units to clear out bubble wrap so they can get within melta distance. If the guard player is at all competent the best you can do with this will be as a distraction and to help force him to turtle up to protect his tanks. Your list would be much better served by adding 2 more drop pods or taking 2 LotD units instead.

2) You essentially have a mini death star in the terminators + lysander. This means the rest of your list needs to be built around killing your opponent's mobility, making them bunch up so lysander can get to them, and scoring the objectives. Your major problem is that your primary source of anti tank is the devs and they are mixed up so that they cannot open tanks effectively and are so fragile it will be surprising if they get more than a turn or two to work. Do you play on boards with lots of ruins? If so you might want to consider dropping some pts from the terminators and sternguard for a TFC so you can bolster the ruins. I would actually consider dropping 5 sternguard to get more troops as well.

For this tournament is this altar of war or maelstorm missions? Ultimately your list and tactics should be designed to take advantage of the missions and types of tables you will see (is there central LoS blockers, ruins, etc.).

It may not be conventional, but if you really want the baneblade dead, I dont think much could beat a stormraven transporting 4 assault cents. Keep the flamers to clear bubblewrap, but make sure to catch the hull. Then murder it with all those s9 armorbane hits. The raven can even help with its tl-mm and tl-ac.

If it was a csm army, i will go with suicide squad of 6 chosen with 5 meltaguns in a rhino but since is a SM army, i will take a speeder with melta and hope to have a jink save.