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.

As the title says, how do you kill a super heavy vehicle that has -1 to be hit, and that can shoot with full power at anybody deep striking?

Mine is in the mail, so I'm hoping the answer is: 'Its Impossible'

Remember, you can spend 1 CP to put it in deepstrike reserve, shielded from an Alpha strike as well!

Spartacus wrote:
Mine is in the mail, so I'm hoping the answer is: 'Its Impossible'

Remember, you can spend 1 CP to put it in deepstrike reserve, shielded from an Alpha strike as well!

So far, "It's Impossible" is the current state of affairs in my gaming group. Really hoping it is not game-breaking.

Well having played against it I'm sure you're probably more enlightened about it than most of us.

My own impressions tell me that the Scorpion would be pretty useless against some kinds of lists. My buddy sometimes runs an IG list of mass infantry squads protecting Plasma pistol officers and Primaris Psykers, who deal the actual damage.

Even in a 7 turn game the scorpion can't hope to do much shooting at 40 point units the whole time.

5 Manticores sitting outside of LoS can take off about 15 wounds in one turn. There's really not a whole lot that the Scorpion can really do to respond to that.

EDIT: Scratch that, forgot about the -1. That's only about 10 wounds per turn. Although if you go Catachan, you could probably get a bit more bang for your buck.

Bring a horde army and play for objectives, I guess? Looking at its datasheet it seems like it'll just instantly annihilate a single target of any size every turn and do nothing else of note. Orks, Guard, etc aren't really going to care about that. Woe be unto you if you brought your own LOW, though.

Maybe in wrong but I didn't think super heavies got legion/craftworld traits. So how is it -1 to hit?

Ecdain wrote:
Maybe in wrong but I didn't think super heavies got legion/craftworld traits. So how is it -1 to hit?

Only spehss muhreens have any sort of restriction on what gets your trait. For every other faction as long as you have the appropriate <> tag it's fair game, therefore Alaitoc Scorpions, Catachan Baneblades, etc etc.

 Fafnir wrote:
5 Manticores sitting outside of LoS can take off about 15 wounds in one turn. There's really not a whole lot that the Scorpion can really do to respond to that.

EDIT: Scratch that, forgot about the -1. That's only about 10 wounds per turn. Although if you go Catachan, you could probably get a bit more bang for your buck.

Or go Cadian, spend 1 cp, cancel out the -1 with a +1 of your own and reroll 1s as well

Add in Old Grudges against scorpions on a junk commander tooling around your artillery park and reroll wounds as well.

Cadians if configured right are an ideal "specific target" removal army with that combo, especially if you have enough indirect fire weapons.

How do you kill any vehicle? You shoot it with a Shadowsword. +1 to hit from Cadian or Vostroyan stratagem. Re-rolls of 1 if needed.

It's titanic so +1 from there too. -1 from Alaitoc. So, a gemmed Cadian Shadowsword shoots 6 times, hits 4,66 times with the re-roll of 1, wounds 4,53 times, and if the Scorpion has the 5+ invulnerable save up, the Volcano Cannon does 21,16 wounds alone. If the invulnerable save isn't up the Scorpion dies to 1 shot. Either way the last 5 wounds are easily taken off by sponson weapons or support vehicles. Either way, a 404 point vehicle and a couple command points absolutely wreck the Scorpion (650p+)

IG superheavies don't get their regimental trait in an auxiliary detachment. They need to be in either a detachment of 3 or the command detachment to qualify.

Scorpions are a real threat, but are quite pricey. Sat next to a farseer who can let them shoot anyone who deep strikes, they are very nasty indeed.

Swarming them does seem to be the way to go. It's far less of a worry if you're running a ton of infantry. It's one of the very last things my repulsors would want to see.

Scorpion can Fly so it can be a target of Lightning Fast Reactions stratagem for extra -1 to hit. It can also be Fortuned for 5+ FNP, or have Spirit Stones for 6+ FNP.

You buy a falchion tank destroyer. We played a tanksgiving game with only tanks and we used Alaitoc rules that our GW man kindly provided the rules for. Even with that chance, it was just me and him wiping each other while land raiders and smaller tanks buzzed around.

lliu wrote:
You buy a falchion tank destroyer. We played a tanksgiving game with only tanks and we used Alaitoc rules that our GW man kindly provided the rules for. Even with that chance, it was just me and him wiping each other while land raiders and smaller tanks buzzed around.

I'm pretty sure this is the wrong approach to be honest. Isn't the Scorpion just going to deep strike, shoot the falchion, then rule the game?

I think it would be better to instead saturate the board with threats. The falchion can only kill one unit a turn, so it will struggle if it has to face off against lots of them.

I've been thinking about an old school monster mash Tyrannid army, when the new book comes out. I'm curious to see what would happen if you ran ~15 screamer killers, as the rumours are that they'll come in well under 100 points each.

You could also deep strike 2 units instead of one, as a stratagem (like the one allowing the tank to blast deep strikers) can only be used once each phase.

So either try deep striking a chaff squad first and hope he takes the bait, or take at least two of what you want to deep strike (scions I guess) and accept that one of them will die.

Spartacus wrote:
Mine is in the mail, so I'm hoping the answer is: 'Its Impossible'

Remember, you can spend 1 CP to put it in deepstrike reserve, shielded from an Alpha strike as well!

That is downright evil.

Another thing that strikes me as brutal, albeit insanely expensive, is an Alaitoc Vampire Hunter. You always add 12" when shooting it, so it always gets the -1 to-hit on top of the hard-to-hit -1, so a -2 on that sucker. Tons of wounds and enough firepower to nuke a Shadowsword in one round. Utterly savage! Albeit... for like 930, it should be.

The chapter tactics does not affect vehicles, craftword does for eldar?

Depends on Craftworld. Some are universal like Alaitoc & Ulthwe, some affect only specific units or weapons.

 Fafnir wrote:
5 Manticores sitting outside of LoS can take off about 15 wounds in one turn. There's really not a whole lot that the Scorpion can really do to respond to that.

EDIT: Scratch that, forgot about the -1. That's only about 10 wounds per turn. Although if you go Catachan, you could probably get a bit more bang for your buck.

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. However in my force I prefer to take Battery artillery weapons rather than the vehicle versions, and for whatever reason Forgeworld's awesome rules writing does not permit PLATFORM based manticores to shoot indirectly.

Time to load up on treads.

Mandragola wrote:
IG superheavies don't get their regimental trait in an auxiliary detachment. They need to be in either a detachment of 3 or the command detachment to qualify.

Bring it in a command detachment, either with 3 officers, or a mix of officers and command tanks. You can always use more orders anyway, and 3 company commanders is only 90 points.

 Fafnir wrote:
Time to load up on treads.

I mean, I could totally take regular manticores. I'm just not sure that 2 manticores at for 266 points is better than 3 earthshakers for 240 points.

This might sound like an utterly awful idea, but maybe Hydras would actually get a place here?

Scorpions have "Fly"--Hydras get +1 to hit versus "Fly", so a Hydra is going to be at its normal BS of 4+.

Mandragola wrote:

lliu wrote:
You buy a falchion tank destroyer. We played a tanksgiving game with only tanks and we used Alaitoc rules that our GW man kindly provided the rules for. Even with that chance, it was just me and him wiping each other while land raiders and smaller tanks buzzed around.

I'm pretty sure this is the wrong approach to be honest. Isn't the Scorpion just going to deep strike, shoot the falchion, then rule the game?

I think it would be better to instead saturate the board with threats. The falchion can only kill one unit a turn, so it will struggle if it has to face off against lots of them.

I've been thinking about an old school monster mash Tyrannid army, when the new book comes out. I'm curious to see what would happen if you ran ~15 screamer killers, as the rumours are that they'll come in well under 100 points each.

Ah. We had spawn points in that game so no deep strike. Good point.

I second the Shadowsword. It's THE universal counter to every large model atm. Also it's fairly cheap for what it can do. You dont even traits to make it work.

Cadian Lascannon Teams would work too i guess.

Edit: For the same cost you can field 3 double gatling Vultures. Thats 129 str 5 shots that will certainly do some damage regardless of -1 to hit. Vultures are great anti-everything Units.

Whenever I see a big scary super heavy, it sometimes helps to compare it to a more common equivalent unit. For example, the Scorpion is only thereabout the same difficulty to kill as a Wraithknight, or three Wave Serpents. Doesn't seem quite so scary when you think of it like that.

 ph34r wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
5 Manticores sitting outside of LoS can take off about 15 wounds in one turn. There's really not a whole lot that the Scorpion can really do to respond to that.

EDIT: Scratch that, forgot about the -1. That's only about 10 wounds per turn. Although if you go Catachan, you could probably get a bit more bang for your buck.

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. However in my force I prefer to take Battery artillery weapons rather than the vehicle versions, and for whatever reason Forgeworld's awesome rules writing does not permit PLATFORM based manticores to shoot indirectly.

But they are allowed to fire all 4 of their missiles in same shooting phase so there is that.

Morkphoiz wrote:
I second the Shadowsword. It's THE universal counter to every large model atm. Also it's fairly cheap for what it can do. You dont even traits to make it work.

Cadian Lascannon Teams would work too i guess.

Edit: For the same cost you can field 3 double gatling Vultures. Thats 129 str 5 shots that will certainly do some damage regardless of -1 to hit. Vultures are great anti-everything Units.

What you and others seem to be missing in this thread is that the Scorpion can Deep Strike thanks to a Stratagem, meaning trying to take another Super Heavy against it likely won't work because, chances are, you can't alpha strike it and it will get the first shot with its' titan-killing weapons.

Caederes wrote:

What you and others seem to be missing in this thread is that the Scorpion can Deep Strike thanks to a Stratagem, meaning trying to take another Super Heavy against it likely won't work because, chances are, you can't alpha strike it and it will get the first shot with its' titan-killing weapons.

There's not much you can do about that - the deep strike strategem is a problem against all Asuryani units now. If you know there's a deep striking Scorpion incoming you could keep valuable units in cover/castled up for your first turn. The model is some 10 inches long, so needs a big space to deploy.

Failing that, hope it rolls poorly on its alpha strike and be consoled in the fact it won't have an invulnerable save next turn because it didn't move.

Blightstar wrote:

 ph34r wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
5 Manticores sitting outside of LoS can take off about 15 wounds in one turn. There's really not a whole lot that the Scorpion can really do to respond to that.

EDIT: Scratch that, forgot about the -1. That's only about 10 wounds per turn. Although if you go Catachan, you could probably get a bit more bang for your buck.

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. However in my force I prefer to take Battery artillery weapons rather than the vehicle versions, and for whatever reason Forgeworld's awesome rules writing does not permit PLATFORM based manticores to shoot indirectly.

But they are allowed to fire all 4 of their missiles in same shooting phase so there is that.

Except for that rule for their missiles that explicitly says that they may only fire one missile per turn.