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Im making a list against Guard and im having a tough time deciding which of my heavy support I should bring to deal with his tanks. My khorne infantry shred guardsmen like lawn trimmings, but not so much against the tanks. My choices are:

Vindicator, Autocannon Forgefiend, and Missile/Plasma Helbrute.

Ooh, that's a hard one. The Vindicator can get lucky and blast the LRBT to kingdom come, while the other 2 are slightly more reliable... slightly.

I would suggest lascannon havocs or a Predator Annihilator, but with what you've got, it depends on if you want slow, but reliable damage, or spectacular spikes that can either leave it unharmed or blow it up in one super-volley!

Do you know what regiment he plays?

None of those are particularly great heavy tank hunters unfortunately, they just don't put out the right stuff for dealing with T8 W12 units, especially for one that can shoot across the board.

If those are your only options however? The Autocannon Forgefiend is the hardest to kill, can reach out at range, and is at least wounding on 4's with a high rate of fire, but its low damage really holds it back with the lowest average damage output of the three (averaging only 2 wounds a turn), The Helbrute is going to hit a bit harder (averaging 2.4 wounds a turn with overcharged plasma), but is way easier to kill. The Vindicator hits the hardest (2.6 wounds a turn, but that's still not many) but has the shortest range by far, a third that of a Russ with a Battlecannon.

Would a Khorne Bloodthirster fare any better? I KNOW it is a tank hunter, but its got a big target on its head.

If you can stretch to it a disco-pred would be your best bet imho.

Plasma, Melta and Lascannon are the main things Leman Russ fear, they have a 3+ with no invul so anything AP-3 or AP-4 is pretty lethal. Plasma is the most versatile in being able to deal with vehicles while still good against heavy infantry the other two tend to overkill infantry.

If those are the only choices, Plasma Missile Helbrute. However I would highly recommend getting some Havocs with lascannons.

Best bet? Something which can get up close and tie it up. That's by far the best way to handle tough tanks at the moment.

Also, if you're taking anti-tank stuff, spread it out amongst various units - don't give them a big target to shoot at (i.e. don't run devastator squads if you can avoid it).

I'd say if points allow, BT and FF. This gives multiple juicy targets. Use the BT's flight to manuver behind cover while shooting the bejeezus out of it with the FF and whatever else you got.

It has to be Lascannons. Everything else puts in you squarely in the guard killbox.

Your best hope is a chaos pred, or land raider. Just pray they don't have manticores, lol.

 Marmatag wrote:
It has to be Lascannons. Everything else puts in you squarely in the guard killbox.

Your best hope is a chaos pred, or land raider. Just pray they don't have manticores, lol.

You know on average a manticore only does 3 wounds to a Chaos Predator per shooting phase, right? Meaning it will take all four of its rockets and four turns of shooting for one to kill a pred?

I can do the math for a Land Raider if you want but I don't think the Manticore can kill it before it runs out of ammo.

 Marmatag wrote:
It has to be Lascannons. Everything else puts in you squarely in the guard killbox.

Your best hope is a chaos pred, or land raider. Just pray they don't have manticores, lol.

A Manticore is not a particularly impressive tank hunter, I'm not sure what the great concern is over here. A Manticore will barely kill a Predator on average if it gets to fire all 4 missiles at full BS, and will only barely make it through half a Land Raiders wounds with all 4 missiles on average. Either of these units will slay a Manticore dramatically more effectively than the Manticore will back if LoS can be found.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It has to be Lascannons. Everything else puts in you squarely in the guard killbox.

Your best hope is a chaos pred, or land raider. Just pray they don't have manticores, lol.

A Manticore is not a particularly impressive tank hunter, I'm not sure what the great concern is over here. A Manticore will barely kill a Predator on average if it gets to fire all 4 missiles at full BS, and will only barely make it through half a Land Raiders wounds with all 4 missiles on average. Either of these units will slay a Manticore dramatically more effectively than the Manticore will back if LoS can be found.

But they cost only 2/3 the price of a lasc pred and have around the same durability as one. Not saying they're ideal tank hunters, but you really don't want to be fighting them with armour if possible

As an aside I had a little workaround...

What if I get a forgefiend and use Bloodletters as my infantry? The Fiend can punch through their infantry lines, allowing me to bleed my high AP, high strength glass cannons into his artillery?

That could work if you can summon them in close enough. I still think you should take the BT for funsies and also decapitation.

Im not sure Khorne Zerkers will have too much difficulty killing a russ.

Zerkers are Hitting on 3s and woudning on 5s with a 4+ save. Shouldn't be too hard to kill a tank with 10 zerkers.

 Dr.Duck wrote:
Im not sure Khorne Zerkers will have too much difficulty killing a russ.

Zerkers are Hitting on 3s and woudning on 5s with a 4+ save. Shouldn't be too hard to kill a tank with 10 zerkers.

Getting to the tank will be the hard part. The guard player will be doing everything he can think of to make sure that doesn't happen, and russes are surprisingly quick this edition when we want them to be. It makes sense he needs some shooting to help shut down a guard player's tanks, if only to buy his beserkers time to make it into combat.