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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
How does one JUST avoid a Wraithknight? They have 36" guns and are Jump Gargantuan...

By ignore it, I meant don't bother attacking it. Stay away from it and kill everything else. Or send a cheap unit or two that may be able to speedbump or tarpit it. Wraithknights are super killy, why send my really good killy units at something that has the ability to simply remove it from the game with a 6? No, thanks!


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Bharring wrote:
Well, you can minimize its impact. Shoot other things instead. Don't charge it. Etc. It'll still punch above its weight, but it won't do as much.

Exactly!

Its like when my Footdar fight Necron wraiths.

They are going to kill what they want, when they want. But if I put firepower into them or charge them, I just lose that much more.

So I can either lose whatever they feel like killing in 5-7 turns, or I can put a lot of effort into fighting them, which costs me all that firepower/bodies in addition to whatever they feel like killing.

Either way, the Wraiths (or WK) does massive damage, but one way loses less than the other.

Then you have to hope that, even with that disadvantage, the rest of your army can handle the rest of his. As CSM vs CWE, that is going to be very hard either way.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 mondo80 wrote:
You guys are throwing all kinds of stuff without asking what he has to work with.

Yep, we don't even know what he has and what's allowed.

I assume moderate funds and regular rules.

Pretty close. Ability to buy new things is limited. Other than basic standard Chaos Marine I have access to the following.
2x Heldrake, a emperors children sonic dread, converted typhon, covered demon standing in for Be'lakor, warhound titan (Lazer and plasma), a few imperial knights, 20 pink horrors, and 50 some cultists.


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Though I'm sure the given advice is helpful to multiple people with different collections.

I think the big questions are:
-Will he bring WKs, and how many
-How much SL bike spam is he likely to have

If you could guess at those answers, we might come up with something.

Even a more casual list with Eldar is going to be an uphill fight for CSM.

Most CSM durability schemes are completely short-circuited by bladestorm. Bladestorm makes a mockery of Mutilators, Oblits, Plague marines, etc. That's on top of all the other OP Eldar stuff. So even "regular" Eldar stuff is OP against CSM. 1K sons are actually decent against bladestorm, but are terrible against basically everything else in the game.

Mutilators should still win against Bladestorm. I don't recall their stats, though.

The Blade storm units are really just Guardians and DAs. Anything else mostly just has it incidentally.

If a 10man squad gets in range before you can touch them, that's only about 2 Blade storm AP2 wounds. That's not enough to take down a unit of Mutilators, by any means. And if they can shoot you, you can shoot (and probably charge) them.

If you're scared of Blade storm, basic CSM are actually a good counter.

They'll drop Guardians like Guardsmen, except that Guardians must be within 12" to shoot. And you only need 2 to make it into combat to be likely to win combat - if you can't finish them with Boltguns.

As for DAs, if they aren't in an Aspect Host - if they get to do what they want the whole game, never get tripped up on terrain or edges or anything, assuming you can get at least a 5+ cover save, it takes them 10 turns to finally win vs CSM, pojnt-for-point. That means you have 10 turns to be wherever you want. So you win anything but kill points.

If the DA are in an Aspect Host, I don't know the numbers, but now they have eiher two other troops or 3 Guardian units on top of the DAs. That'll be a crapton of points on basic infantry.

At any rate, Rhinos for your CSMs would chump a Blade storm spam list with ease.

So, really, Bladestorm isn't the problem. If it were, CSM would stomp them. And then CSM would actually be good!

(Wouldn't 1k sons be very cost ineffective vs Blade storm? Only 1/3 of the wounds AP Marines, so you're paying a ton for models that survive 1/6th of the time more, provided they have no cover whatsoever.)

It's almost everything else in the Dex that would terrify you.

Mutilators are slow as hell while eldar can shoot then run backwards thanks to battle focus. Unless you roll very hot your never going to have your mutilator assault anything in the eldar army.

Mutilators move 6" a turn.

BattleFocus is d6 rerollable.

A Guardian unit must be less than 12" away to shoot their guns.

Thus, you must be in charge range if they shot at you. Odds are it'll be a long charge range if they have no reason to stick around, but it it certainly possible. But more importantly, they must give ground or give you an easy charge. And be in very close range for their guns. More practically, you're either killing them with guns (boltguns do that very, very well), or pushing them off an objective.


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Also, that presumes they didn't battle focus towards you.

Sit at 19" away, shooting at them.
They can sit back and eat the firepower (not responding at all), or can battle focus to within 12" and have the survivors shoot ba k.

Then you move up 6", shoot them, and then roll for a less than 6" charge.

Bladestorm is just insult to injury. "Scared of" implies that one has the time to worry about bladestorm while being hammered by the other stuff.

I was thinking of single Multilators Jancoran-style. Bladestorm hammers that tactic hard.

Oh, I hadn't looked at that thread until now.

I'm not so sure it does. At t5 2+/5++
Shurikens do:
(2/3)(1/6)(2/3) = 2/27 AP2 wounds/shot
(2/3)(1/6)(1/6) = 1/54 AP5 wounds/shot
Total = 5/54 wounds/shot

To kill an unmarked solo Mutilator, you need (2*54/5) shots, or just north of 20.

A mutilator is 55 points I think? Vs 10 Guardians at 90? So you get 19-24" away (and shoot, if it has guns). If the Guardians advance towards it, you should survive, and have a very short (<6" charge distance. A bit closer than I'd like, but you should be able to soften up a Guardian squad easily. If the Guardians don't want to give you the charge, they can't shoot, and they can't move forward. They are locked and made irrelevant.

And all that assumes the Mutilator has no ranged weapons. Is that true?

All that aside, the Mutilator still does more vs the Guardians that. They'll do vs Guardsmen, fire Warriors, Marines, or really almost any other troop. Most can shoot without giving up the charge. Less damage per salvo, sure, but they don't need to suicide to shoot.

I quite agree that its not Bladwstorm the OP should be worrying about. I just wanted to make sure he didn't get that misconception.

I don't believe Mutilators can shoot at all.

The bitterness of bladestorm is that it's salt in the wound.

Eldar player: "Make 83 armor saves Astartes losers! Oh, and 6 more are AP 2!" As if the 83 armor saves forced isn't going to table the opposition to begin with.

Then why warn the player that Bladestorm will short circuit most of their defenses?

Will it cut through T5+ any faster than without it? No.

Will it shoot a hellturkey out of the sky? Fat chance. Can't even ding the front/side of a Rhino.

Will it stop CSMs from casting Invis efficiently? Or bypass Invis? Nope again.

Will it affect FnP or IWND? Once again, no.

What it does do is that, 1/6th of the time when wounding, you need to roll your Invuln or Cover instead. Yeah that sucks. But I'd hardly call it short curciting. And its certainly not CSMs best protection.

We shouldn't have the OP focus on it.

Fair enough. There's nothing you can do about it anyway. If a CSM list is using Mutilators and plague marines, the bladestorm has extra utility than being fired at generic marines. That was my main point.

So does a plasma gun.

Bharring wrote:
So does a plasma gun.

Plasma guns cost. Quite a bit, actually. Bladestorm is free. The sad tale of Astartes vs Eldar this edition. It's telling that even a Gladius formation with hundreds of points of free vehicles is still an underdog to Eldar.

 CrownAxe wrote:

nareik wrote:
Can't you take Belakor as a detachment by himself? Make him your warlord and that's your primary detachment sorted. You're now free to take any detachments from any army you like!

No you can't. He's just an HQ choice for CSM and Daemons

Ah well thanks for answering that. I don't have the Belakor dataslate myself and was sure I've seen the suggestion made in the past... as such suggestion revoked!

Bladestorm is only free if naked Marines are supposed to beat DAs, point for point, in every possible matchup, usually by 2x-3x as much.

Bharring wrote:
Bladestorm is only free if naked Marines are supposed to beat DAs, point for point, in every possible matchup, usually by 2x-3x as much.

It's free in the same way that ATSKNF and grenades are free for tac marines. Except that bladestorm is actually useful in 7th ed: the shootout edition. Assault need not apply. Hence the bitterness over free things that actually matter.

That's like saying Power Armor, T4, RP, Synapse, etc are all free...

Bharring wrote:
That's like saying Power Armor, T4, RP, Synapse, etc are all free...

Perhaps free isn't the right word. Regardless, there's a surcharge for a plasma gun and no surcharge for bladestorm. That doesn't seem equitable to me in a game where all the marines "advantages" are non-advantages due to being shot off the table after taking two steps. Marines don't even have an advantage from toughness, because S6/7 is the panacea of 7th ed. Lower strengths are anathema in comparison. Bladestorm gives Eldar 1/6 of their shots Str infinity, which is of obvious value in MC/GMC 40K.

Martel732 wrote:

Bharring wrote:
That's like saying Power Armor, T4, RP, Synapse, etc are all free...

Perhaps free isn't the right word. Regardless, there's a surcharge for a plasma gun and no surcharge for bladestorm. That doesn't seem equitable to me in a game where all the marines "advantages" are non-advantages due to being shot off the table after taking two steps. Marines don't even have an advantage from toughness, because S6/7 is the panacea of 7th ed. Lower strengths are anathema in comparison. Bladestorm gives Eldar 1/6 of their shots Str infinity, which is of obvious value in MC/GMC 40K.

All this post did was made me think was that sisters are looking better and better :S. Why waste points paying for toughness?

Bharring wrote:
That's like saying Power Armor, T4, RP, Synapse, etc are all free...

They kinda are.

You might be right on Guardians seeing that they're pretty lousy (I consider them to be the worst unit in the Eldar codex), but Dire Avengers make a mockery of the units you listed earlier. Combined with Battle Focus, you shoot at 18" and run away. You can also do this at BS5.

Bladestorm ain't free. It's included in model's price. If you get a round of shooting on eldar troops, they die like 3 ppm conscripts, yet cost 3 times as much. Another question is thanks to Matt, they've got free battlefocus which is extremely annoyin. I don't mind pseudo-rending for such points but run+shoot is just ott unfluffy. They allready have fleet. How come harlequins who are even faster can't do it? What about roided dark eldar? Nope, only eldar can for reasons.

In the fluff they are supposed to be lightning fast. Harlequins can run and charge, the issue is more that the dark eldar don't have anything similar, not that the craftworlds do have this.

 koooaei wrote:
Bladestorm ain't free. It's included in model's price. If you get a round of shooting on eldar troops, they die like 3 ppm conscripts, yet cost 3 times as much. Another question is thanks to Matt, they've got free battlefocus which is extremely annoyin. I don't mind pseudo-rending for such points but run+shoot is just ott unfluffy. They allready have fleet. How come harlequins who are even faster can't do it? What about roided dark eldar? Nope, only eldar can for reasons.

It wouldn't be quite as disproportionately useful if MCs and GMCs weren't gods incarnate this edition.