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Recently played a game using Necron VS Tau, the Tau side did not use powerful competitive lists, with zero Ripetides, the only "trickery" is the Tidewall fortification with Broadsides on top and the Special Etheral Aun'va (which I haven't yet to study, let alone knowing he gain 3+ FnP against Gauss Cannon hits ) I took Necron CAD with a single Canoptek Harvest with min Wraiths. While another mini Star I take is a squad of Lychguard, joined by Overlord with Warsycthe and Veil of Darkness, as well as a Lord with Solar Staff.

Deployment was short table edge. My plan was to teleport this footslog close combat unit into the Tau gun lines to provide distraction from the Wraiths running accross the field. But found that this unit are just underwhelming, after I landed, the Tau simply get the Etherals nearby runing to the other side of his deployment zone (move and ran made them out of 15 inches, considering the terrain, that is effectively out of the assault threat range) while the Tidewall also simply moving 6 inch away from them with the Broadsides on top and dispatch the drones attached to the platform to form a screen, and then this 400pts scary looking unit is simply ignored for the rest of the game, NOT A SINGLE SHOT was fired at them in any of the Tau shooting phase. But by themselves they failed 8 inch assault twice over the course of game , only thing they achieved is killing a single Phrina and a few drones, as well as getting the Overlord wounded twice during overwatch.

I now have the actual experience of the true deficiency of these kind of "traditional shock troopers": they are tooooooo slow, can only move at most 6 inch a turn, taking terrains into consideration, their averaged assault threat range is only 11 inches. So after they enter the battle field, they can be easily avoided, even if they deepstrike very close to enemy line. An army with Ok-ish mobility could just run away from them with ease.

I now consider maybe the best use of these heavy assault units (Lychguard, Terminators, etc.) is not taking the fight to the enemy but to be used as a defensive combat units in a gunline, aiming at fend off or at least delay the enemy assault units like Khrone hounds, Wraiths, TWC, Nurgle Spawns, or even big choppy MCs etc. to disrupt the vulnerable shooty units. Because when the enemy has to come to fight you, the mobility problem is no more.

What do you guys think , is there any other way to mitigate these footslogers innate problem?

Double Trouble.

I run a Conclave of the Burning One w/ Veil of Darkness, and a Lychguard unit with Vargard Obyron. I can choose when to drop the hammer and they drop together, ideally bracketing your primary target. That way, it's much easier to intercept them if they attempt to flee.

It also helps if you have extremely mobile units to support them - I use Tomb Blades and Praetorians.

Lychguard has worked quite well against me (CSM) but I see that they are too slow against all those Tau-Jetpack shenanigans. It's probably the same against Eldar.
I don't think they are a bad unit, they only compete with Flayed ones, which are much cheaper but also not as durable and lacking AP. Simply put... you don't need lychguard against Tau actually, but every close combat oriented army will have to worry about them, since their scythes hit before fists or axes.

If you want more mobility from them, you could take a Monolith, but that's quite an investment .

 Otto Weston wrote:
Double Trouble.

I run a Conclave of the Burning One w/ Veil of Darkness, and a Lychguard unit with Vargard Obyron. I can choose when to drop the hammer and they drop together, ideally bracketing your primary target. That way, it's much easier to intercept them if they attempt to flee.

It also helps if you have extremely mobile units to support them - I use Tomb Blades and Praetorians.

Thanks for the thought, having two deep-strikers to the back and some fast moving units pushing on front to form an encirclement and crush them in the middle? That sounds a good idea

Neophyte2012 wrote:

 Otto Weston wrote:
Double Trouble.

I run a Conclave of the Burning One w/ Veil of Darkness, and a Lychguard unit with Vargard Obyron. I can choose when to drop the hammer and they drop together, ideally bracketing your primary target. That way, it's much easier to intercept them if they attempt to flee.

It also helps if you have extremely mobile units to support them - I use Tomb Blades and Praetorians.

Thanks for the thought, having two deep-strikers to the back and some fast moving units pushing on front to form an encirclement and crush them in the middle? That sounds a good idea

ideally, yes but whether or not the deep-striking goes off successfully is another matter xD

As with most heavy infantry you need to fix the enemy in place and then strike them. Luckily warrior blobs can fix enemies fairly well in place, as can wraiths (with the added advantage of fewer models to set charges up through). Then charge in and rip them to shreds.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Lychguard has worked quite well against me (CSM) but I see that they are too slow against all those Tau-Jetpack shenanigans. It's probably the same against Eldar.
I don't think they are a bad unit, they only compete with Flayed ones, which are much cheaper but also not as durable and lacking AP. Simply put... you don't need lychguard against Tau actually, but every close combat oriented army will have to worry about them, since their scythes hit before fists or axes.

If you want more mobility from them, you could take a Monolith, but that's quite an investment .

My opponent only have three Crisis Suit model (including a Commander) and no Riptide but lots and lots of Drones.
I agree with your points, maybe I should use more Wraiths instead of Lychguard when facing Tau (unless I have other things to encircle the opponent) because they are much faster and can charge through bubble warp models if those models are not properly placed (i.e. being 3.1 inchs away from the unit they are shielding) . On the other hand, the Lychguard are better facing someone who would charge at their friendlies.

Really depends on the unit, what i like to do with my terminators depends on their load out.

For my Deathwing command squad and knights i do the following.

Deep strike both, Command squad moves away from the enemy 4~6 inches, shoots.

Knights move between the command squad and the unit.

If they charge the knights, i abuse shield wall and give them all T5, next turn i charge in with the command squad and abuse banner +1A and the charge +1A and challenge who ever the leader in the squad is with the champion.

My tactic with Chaos Terminators is to keep them cheap (min squad with combi-melta/axe or fist) and have other threats such as hounds threatening to create target saturation.

You are against a Tau "Drone Wall". They do tend to break assault armies up a bit. The Drones stop charges against good units and trigger/provide plenty of Supporting fire. Enough to actually have an effect in many cases thanks to being twinlinked.

In game play the TEQ type units are not really great. To slow to get were they are going, and not really tough enough to be real threat to things you want them to be. Best use of them is as bully units going after stuff that really can't stand up to them. Makes them great for clearing troops of objectives, smashing artillery positions, and making a mess of parking lots. But still leaves them bad at hunting down deathstars.

Lychguard are not tough!?!?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
oh you meant terminators