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Recently had a discussion over army hard counters. He said that Grey Knights were a hard counter to Daemons. I responded I thought that the hardest match to fight was Orks against Tau. What are you guys' thoughts?

Hmm. I actually think it might be Tyranids or Dark Eldar against Tau. Conventional/vanilla 'nids generally try to use cover and/or venomthropes to make it across the table, but markerlights will shut that down pretty hard. Tau weapons will wound little bugs on 2's while denying their armor, and markerlights will make sure they don't get cover. Big bugs will take a surprising number of wounds from pulse weapons, and missile spam should easily force enough saves to kill them. Flyrant tyranids do a little better, but Tau have great access to skyfire, and they have markerlights on top of that.

Dark eldar *might* have it even worse against Tau though. Most units in the army are very dependent on their transports to work, and tau basic guns glance those on 5s while their markerlights mitigate the ability to jink. Anything in a transport, scourges, and even webway portal units would all be tempted to deepstrike to close the gap without retaliation, but Tau also have easy access to interceptor. Tau also shut down Night Fighting with black sun filters, so trying to make the darkness your friend doesn't help. Once you get through our paper-thin transports with your basic guns, most dark eldar stuff is going to be wounded on 2s with no armor save (though we might get FNP depending on the turn).

Not to rag on Tau, but I do hope the new book takes away some of their weakness-mitigating gear. It just seems like they'd be a more interesting army to play against if you could deepstrike close to them, use cover against them, or negate super overwatch when charging them. ^_^;

Definitely not GK vs Daemons though. GK have some fluffy anti-daemon abilities (psychic powers that lower daemon saves, gear that hits harder against daemons, etc.), but a swarm of rending slaaneshi daemons should still have decent odds of slicing them up, MCs that make it into melee are still going to ignore their expensive armor saves, and tzeentch lists actually have a chance of shutting down their critical powers.

GK vs. SM

SM who take terminators murder GK termies, pallies, dreadknights in melee

SM who take Grav murder GK everything

SM who take Plasma murder GK everything

Its pretty messed how lopsided it is.

Nothing will ever come close to comparing how automatically hard-countered 5th ed GK's vs. Daemons were...

Beyond having every single imaginable advantage plus the kitchen sink thrown in, Durp Knights could actively stop Daemons from even legally placing a single model on the table.

Hard counter to every army?

- Eldar

Tau vs armies that rely on cover and gold to overwatch, like Nids and DE is probably the worst categorical "army vs army" matchup but at the same time DE poison weaponry does whack Riptides pretty good.

 Slaphead wrote:
Hard counter to every army?

- Eldar

and Lictor shame hard counters eldar. But so does space marines, thunderdome and a hand full of other things.

Dark Eldar poison vs RavenWing.

 conker249 wrote:
Dark Eldar poison vs RavenWing.

Nah the ravenwing should have 2+ rerollable cover saves. Takes 324 shots to drop a unit of 3.

An army of grotesques versus 7 dreadnoughts....

Green tide vs SCAT bike spam.

Ork Player: I Have 300 orks!
Eldar Player: I have 300 S6 shots!!

Necrons vs Imperial Guard. Necrons are especially well equipped to feth over Guard.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Necrons vs Imperial Guard. Necrons are especially well equipped to feth over Guard.

Worse. Necrons vs IK.

A LotD army vs anything. You will not win anything.

 jreilly89 wrote:
Recently had a discussion over army hard counters. He said that Grey Knights were a hard counter to Daemons. I responded I thought that the hardest match to fight was Orks against Tau. What are you guys' thoughts?

Dark Eldar vs Mech IG is almost invariably painfully one-sided in favor of the IG and have been for probably four editions at this point. Necrons are a pretty astounding hardcounter to IG currently Eldar can make themselves to be spectacular hardcounters to just about any kind of list.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
Green tide vs SCAT bike spam.

Ork Player: I Have 300 orks!
Eldar Player: I have 300 S6 shots!!

You really are bitter against everything eldar, arn't ya?

The hardest counter would be drop pod or tau vs Deldar, instantly deletes anything you want.

Eldar vs anything XD

 Frozocrone wrote:
A LotD army vs anything. You will not win anything.

Ah yes. Who could forget the faction that automatically loses turn 1 if they don't take allies

Anything vs Imperial Guard.
There are no armies out there that are not at least an uphill struggle for us and the number that can just delete entire portions of the army per turn *shudders*.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Anything vs Imperial Guard.
There are no armies out there that are not at least an uphill struggle for us and the number that can just delete entire portions of the army per turn *shudders*.

IG rapes BA because your weapons are still good against us. We've go no good jink saves or cover tricks, so battle cannons blast expensive dudes into kibble. I'd love to army swap with you and show you how pitiful BA really are. You need a couple sacrificial units that the BA must assault and we're done.

master of ordinance wrote:Anything vs Imperial Guard.
There are no armies out there that are not at least an uphill struggle for us and the number that can just delete entire portions of the army per turn *shudders*.

Dark Eldar usually have a very bad time against IG. I don't think I've ever lost a game to Dark Eldar with my IG in like...4 editions.

I don't think IG are particularly bad against things like SW's, BA, GK, Orks, etc (assuming no weird allies gimmicks/formations/etc), and against these armies things like first turn make all the difference. The bigger issue in those matchups usually is that half the IG book is worthless and IG armies tend to be rather mono-build.

Martel732 wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
Anything vs Imperial Guard.
There are no armies out there that are not at least an uphill struggle for us and the number that can just delete entire portions of the army per turn *shudders*.

IG rapes BA because your weapons are still good against us. We've go no good jink saves or cover tricks, so battle cannons blast expensive dudes into kibble. I'd love to army swap with you and show you how pitiful BA really are. You need a couple sacrificial units that the BA must assault and we're done.

Hrm, I don't think BA can claim they're prostrate before the Imperial Guard. They have lots of speed, can get a reasonable level of resiliency, and really I think the two armies are pretty equal overall (*depending on build*). I have a hard time seeing either at a major disadvantage to the other.

At least until weird allies shennanigans & formations and the like get involved, then all bets are off and it's really more the "allied" army that makes the bigger difference.

They don't have reasonable resiliency against IG. The IG weapons stink vs most power lists, but against BA, they're awesome.

Martel732 wrote:
They don't have reasonable resiliency against IG. The IG weapons stink vs most power lists, but against BA, they're awesome.

What's so spectacular against BA that are worthless against say, Codex marines?

It's usually other gimmicks like "oh everything is twin linked just about every damn turn" and "lol have 30 rerrollable grav shots at your heavy tank squadron" that make SM's so much better, not resiliency.

BA hand out FNP to large sections of the list. FNP that battle cannons and other STR 8 ordinance happens to ignore. And the IG weapons look at lot better when they aren't insta-deleted by vanilla marine shenanigans. Getting to fire 2-3 times means a lot more BA get blown up before assault happens.

Martel732 wrote:
BA hand out FNP to large sections of the list. FNP that battle cannons and other STR 8 ordinance happens to ignore. And the IG weapons look at lot better when they aren't insta-deleted by vanilla marine shenanigans. Getting to fire 2-3 times means a lot more BA get blown up before assault happens.

How many IG armies are packing battlecannons these days? Relatively few.

A 5+ cover save and a modicum of spread will generally thin out expected casualties such that a Russ tank usually isn't killing anything more than a couple of HWS's typically would. Yeah, if they land a juicy hit on a squad in the open, that's gonna suck, but I can count the number of times I've seen that happen in the last two editions on one hand.

Likewise, how are battlecannons more effective against BA's than say, Space Wolves?

 Vaktathi wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
BA hand out FNP to large sections of the list. FNP that battle cannons and other STR 8 ordinance happens to ignore. And the IG weapons look at lot better when they aren't insta-deleted by vanilla marine shenanigans. Getting to fire 2-3 times means a lot more BA get blown up before assault happens.

How many IG armies are packing battlecannons these days? Relatively few.

A 5+ cover save and a modicum of spread will generally thin out expected casualties such that a Russ tank usually isn't killing anything more than a couple of HWS's typically would. Yeah, if they land a juicy hit on a squad in the open, that's gonna suck, but I can count the number of times I've seen that happen in the last two editions on one hand.

Likewise, how are battlecannons more effective against BA's than say, Space Wolves?

They aren't negating the FNP that Space Wolves didn't pay for. Battle cannons don't double out TWC, and SW use drop pods with impunity. When BA use drop pods, it turns off our chapter tactic.

These threads are always ridiculous. It ends up being everyone saying either their army v. Eldar or their army v. Everyone. Like the BA v. IG crap. Both armies can deal with each other of deployed appropriately. You know what your opponent is playing, play to that.

I will say BA v. Tau is going to be an uphill battle due to lots of Interceptor (negating BA's DS heavy deployment) and snap shot shenanigans. But it can be done. Take the Relic Jump Pack on a Sanguinary Priest and force them to snap shot their Interceptor. One unit will end up in their face. Too bad they won't be able to charge, but BA bring lots of DS special weapons to the game. But this all assumes Tau will follow the trend of the Cheesedexes that have come out in 2015. If they get knocked back into the level of the 2014 codexes, they will probably be countered well enough.

Joke's on the Tau because I don't DS much at all.

Martel, I do have to say you have confused me

Martel732 wrote:
Joke's on the Tau because I don't DS much at all.

Do you just run Jump Packs up the board? Does that work well enough? Honest question. I am trying to figure out a better way to deploy my Blood Angels once they are ready for play.